WANTED AOL: DEAD or DEADER!!!!

[Michael]

Ok, I know AOL is a joke as far as ISP's go, but the content isn't bad so I've hung onto it. But now, well, get this: it sabotaged my sound cards ability to be recognized!!! I recently installed a new hard drive and consequently reloaded AOL (4.0...the least buggy and least intrusive of all the versions, imho). Finally when all my hardware and programs were installed I decided to try out my audio program (DcArt32). I created a wav. file and replayed it, it was totally garbled and scratchy. I downloaded some mp3's....they also sounded horrible. However, when I'd reboot sometimes the files played perfectly...for a while, then they would return to their garbled state or windows wouldn't even recognize that a sound card existed and I couldn't play or hear anything....EXCEPT FOR THE AOL WAV SOUNDS!!!! So, after 3 days of changing cables, drivers, sound cards and going generally insane I finally realized that everytime I clicked on AOL, did some surfing, and then tried to play a music file it would fail. This evening I unistalled AOL and have been playing music of all sorts for the past hour while surfing and clicking on several programs....WITH NO PROBLEMS. So, it's true, AOL is like the grand dictator that wants to control everything or make your life miserable if it can't. I suspect something was corrupted during the AOL installation, but it's a moot point....I will NEVER, EVER, again give AOL 1 cent of my money, content or not!!! WHEW, man I feel better now!!! Sorry dudes, just had to vent.

[Xayd]

Hehe, you have found the truth, young grasshopper.



Xayd

[LawyerRon]

Where do we send the flowers.

[RE2]

I had a neighbor that insisted that he had to have AOL software loaded and running all the time to "chat" with his online friends. Needless to say I made alot of service calls to buddie's house. Also when floppies ruled the roost, (286, 386, & 486 era) my friend reportedly had a buddy that would request the free trial software and promptly format the disks when they arrived. Apparently he didn't buy floppies for years!
Anyways AOL is horrid for sure.

[Smoke24]

Yes, you've finally seen the light. When I first went online several years ago, I started with AOHell and didn't even keep them 'till my trial month was up. I gave them the boot and have been much happier since. The main thing I didn't like was they wanted to always send you to one of their partner sites no matter where you really wanted to go, guess they were trying to keep mine and your money in their family. I switch to my fourth ISP since AOHell tomorrow. Givin' my Knology cable the boot in favor of AT&T, just hope it's better and a whole lot more reliable.

[mairving]

I think most of us have been there at one time in our computer life. I used AOL and Compuserve about five or six years ago. Then I quit them both ( I also got a new credit card because they would not quit billing me). I went to a dialup ISP and was amazed at how much faster my connection was. Now I have a cable connection. I am not sure what is next.

[WJWheels]

Compuserve was a real pioneer and large long before the advent of windoze (does anyone remember "Tapcis"?). It was still a good service UNTIL AoHell bought it from H&R Block and turned it into AOLjr.

[systempat]

Congratulation! -- Yeah! (applause)
Welcome to the next level of your online life!
I think I had 2 or 3 months of paying AOL service, then I got a look at "real" Internet and jumped and never looked back. This was in the Windows 3.1 era for me and it was about Netscape 3.0
One of the many bad things about AOL is the amount of SPAM mail. It must be easy to hack or buy AOL e-mail lists because everybody has them. Used to at least be able to use the floppies they would send as free floppies. Now I get the CDs and can't reuse them. Maybe I could make a mobile or a sun-catcher out of them.

[jotto84]

at work, we get about 1 call a day from people who are borrowing laptops from the IT department, this one call is always about AOL, they always install it, and every time they do, they have to bring the laptop back so we can reconfigure it for the corp network. Never use AOL. To defend AOL, it dominates the new computer user market, which is the majority of surfers out there, and therefor they all use AOL to chat, well the only reason i was upset about losing AOL, was the chat feature. But sure enough they created a damnt nice prog called AOL IM, free aol messaging that lets you communicate with other AOL users and AOL IM. To me, this program is far easier and better than ICQ