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Hi all

This thread is for those who hate AOL and those who do should read this...

Many years ago and up until 2 days ago I hated AOL with a passion, if people told me that they had signed up for it I used to laugh, many a joke was made about ar*eholes on line as we used to call it and many a PC was brought to me to be fixed as AOL had messed something up. The reason as I found out for myself was messy install and uninstall routines that left registry entries, unremovable desktop shortcuts and the like, as well as rewriting the winsock, and the TCP/IP stack was a homebrewed one that bore (as far as I was told) no resemblance to the one shipped with MS OS's.

I spent many a sad hour trying to get their old USB ADSL voyager modems working, we all know USB is flaky at times, but to use it to link an ADSL connection to a PC was just plain stupid, especially if you weren't PC savvy and accidentally plugged it in before the install routine told you to.

But not anymore, I recently had the task of setting up a laptop for an old lady that I know, bless her 60 years old and surfs the web daily, I didnt mind copying all her pictures and videos over, but then she asked "can you put the internet on it for me", I must admit, I'd seen the AOL disk and the software on the PC and I balked slightly, the though of farting around with a USB voyager modem, and the long and tedious file install that AOL does, but no, I ran the disk, I found out that the ADSL voyager modem now plugs into the ethernet port and that the whole thing took less time than it took the lady to make a cup of tea...

Gobsmacked.... thats the only word I can use..

So to all I say if someone says they use AOL, dont take pity on them, pat them on the back and say "bloody good innit", I will be doing...

Regards

Hey....A blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then. I am still a little gun shy with them as my ex-wife once used AOL and she ALL kinds of problems with her PC. If will take alot for me to change my opinion of them.

Hmmmm, it will be a while before i will trust it.

THE worst combo i can think of is a Sony Vaio using Norton that connects with AOL.

Whats even worse, doing spyware removal I have seen that setup twice so far.

I have AOL as an email account (pay version as the other computers in the house use the program), although I just use the website to check my mail. I hated AOL's dialup, as most people hate it. Now I'm pulling 15MBPS !

Nah...I think the worst combo is an eMachines with Norton on a dial up to AOHell.