whats everyones beef with AOL???

[jackdog1]

Hello To You All,, Ive Been Lurking Around This Forum For A Little While Now And You All Seem Pretty Tolerent People So Please Forgive Me For What May Seem A Pretty Dumb Question From Someone Who Knows Very Little, So What Is Everyone's Beef With Aol Anyway????(appologies If This Is In The Wrong Place).

[Troy]

I haven't personally experienced any AOL biases here at Daniweb, but I probably would not in the forums I spend time in. I think a lot of professional geeks "hate" AOL because in the early days and continueing for many years, AOL did not support a lot of Internet standards. So if you were a web developer or an email service provider, the AOL users presented problems to you because of the types of traffic AOL allowed and their proprietary browser and email client software. I don't have any recent experience, but those AOL issues are probably not much of an issue these days. But you know how people hang on to bitterness!

Also, it was generally considered by the true geeks that only internet morons would sign up for the clunky, slow, restricted AOL service. So us "pros" did not have a lot of respect for the AOL community. Again, a lot of that probably does not hold as much water now. :cool:

[jackdog1]

thanks for the responce Troy, when you say restricted service what exactley do you mean? and is this still relevant now? im new to p.c's all round so please excuse any ignorance,ive read in various places about security issues with I.E so at the moment im mostly using aol's built in browser are these worries unfounded and am i missing out by not using I.E 6 or am i right in thinking your gonna tell me to try opera or something!! anyway thanks for responding and sorry for going onto browsers so if this is now in the wrong place once again i appologise. sorry one more thing who closes the threads the original author or moderators, if it should be me can you please tell me how?

[Troy]

I'm not an expert on the current AOL service by any means, so I really can't reply with any authority, but as I said in my first reply, I think most of the old reasons not to use AOL have been rectified. If you are a computer novice, AOL probably makes a lot of sense. They have lots of tools in place to protect you from viruses and other Internet attacks.

I can remember (8+ years ago) that AOL's dialup connection used a proprietary protocol rather than standard TCP/IP. This was fine as long as all you wanted to use was AOL's service. If you wanted to, for example, fire up an Internet phone program or play an online game, you were out of luck. You could browse the web and check your email as long as you used the AOL tools to do it. You could not use any email or any browser program you wanted.

Now days, I believe, you can connect to your AOL account, then minimize the AOL software and use the connection like any standard Internet service...I think. If that's the case, as long as you are happy with the service and the price, use AOL.

And yes, you are correct, this thread should probably be in the Networking forum rather than here. I don't have privs to move it, though.

[Narue]

>So What Is Everyone's Beef With Aol Anyway????
There has to be a reason? Now, capitalizing every word in a sentence, there's definitely a reason why that is annoying.

[jackdog1]

Not done intentionally, in fact i only just noticed now you point it out but i don't sit here flicking the capslock button if thats what your thinking! any idea's why it's come up like that?

[Narue]

>i don't sit here flicking the capslock button
Shift happens.

[jwenting]

And of course them sending veritable floods of CDs all over the world, including to countries where they don't even operate (don't ask me why).
That too may have declined, at least I've not seen them here (or maybe they've become smart and realised they don't operate in this country).

But Troy has it right. Their non-standard service causing immense trouble for communication, the general morosity of their members (to the point where "aol!" became equivalent with "watch out, idiot in the room"), that's the reasons right there.
It'll probably take a generation or more for it to wear off.

[Troy]

Oh man! Thanks, jwenting! How could I forget to mention the affect of their advertising?! I believe AOL has produced enough cdroms to cover the entire surface of planet earth to a depth of 3.5 feet. Maybe that's an exaggeration. ;)

One particularly extravagant mailing they did involved a cdrom contained in a nicely decorated and heavy tin container. Each year my cousin and I wrap it up and mail it back to each other as either a birthday or Christmas gift. For some reason, we never get tired of the joke. Wow! 100 FREE HOURS! You must really love me!

[jwenting]

Any idea of the plan to collect a million AOL CDs and dump them on the doorstep of their corporate headquarters succeeded?

[kc0arf]

Hello,

AOL, in my opinion, is a virus. It installs entries into your registry that cannot be yanked easily when un-install time comes around. I have seen the client cause problems on an otherwise stable machine. I have heard of people unable to get AOL to stop billing them, and hassles getting out of the contract.

Friends don't let friends use AOL.

Christian

[Troy]

Another good point. Thank you, kc0arf. I guess I've blocked most of the horrors from memory. Yes, I don't know about the current version, but versions I had to troubleshoot for clients years ago were about impossible to uninstall. I remember wiping the harddrive and re-installing the OS just to get AOL off the machine--that is ridiculous. AOL would take over your browser--rebranding it as an AOL version. It would take over your dialup connections messing up your other dial up connections if you had any configured. It would place all this crap in your startup and systray. It really was a very bloated piece of crap that had potential to really mess up your otherwise stable system.

The Problem

The ultimate marketing plan. Push free samples of a drug until people are addicted and then charge them a fortune and make them afraid to quit. Except it's not a drug. It's a way for people to access the Internet -- web, email, and all -- that's so easy, you don't have to have the slightest clue what you're doing after months (or even years) of use. And you may not even be concerned about who you are annoying across the globe with using all capital letters or other breaches of netiquette.

After you pop in the free AOL CD-ROM in one of it's many incarnations and endless color schemes, you're on your way to establishing a buyer habit that will cost you wads of cash, your freedom of non-AOL/Time-Warner news and shopping, and even your respect in the eyes of people who would otherwise consider doing business with you. It's amazing AOL even tried to market it for small businesses.

I have never heard of ANYONE switching to AOL after using real internet tools to surf the WHOLE world wide web. Like Earthlink's switch-from-AOL campaign said, "It's time to take off the trainer's wheels."

Advice

(1) DO NOT install AOL if you plan to use any other web browsers, dialups, or mail clients. If it's too late, uninstall all of them and re-install.

(2) DO not install (or uninstall) more than one version of AOL on your system. It DOES NOT UPGRADE well, but instead gives you multiple copies of files, multiple shortcuts, etc..

(3) DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES install any BETA (experimental) version for testing. Do not be AOL's guinea pig, unless you don't mind potentially loosing everything on your system. Such things should be left to the experts using test PCs. Wait until the bugs are out before you even think about upgrading ANY software, especially from AOL.

I hope you have found this information useful. Hopefully now any AOL users browsing this forum will dump their crappy excuse for an ISP! ;)

cheers

[deighvid]

I will chime in on the AOHELL issue. I wholeheartedly agree with kc0arf and that is where my biggest issue personally lies, there is no such thing as "uninstalling AOHELL", I have tried numerous times and short of reformatting a hard drive you can forget it. I begged my aging mother not to install it on her computer to no avail... "its easy and I can play games...." uggghhh. When I got my new big boy VAIO for christmas past, I commited, NO AOHELL, and have had no problems. We still have it on the 3 yr old DELL due to the kid, and there are always "nasties" popping up about AOHELL errors but I dare not want to feel the wrath of the 15 year old if I reformatted now so thats the only reason it is still on, once she is gone, reformatting will occur and AOHELL will be of the past. Sure it definately falls in the category "Internet for Dummies" (no offense) but as I tell my Mom, anything you can do on AOHELL you can do elsewhere on the internet. She will listen to me eventually, albeit probobly funeral day.
Top of the day all.
David

[Catweazle]

...And yes, you are correct, this thread should probably be in the Networking forum rather than here. I don't have privs to move it, though.

I've been pretty busy elsewhere for a few weeks and have 'missed' dealing with quite a few misplaced topics.

On reading through this though, I suspect that it's one of those 'exceptions to the rule' topics which are probably best left here rather than dealt with in a Tech section. "Why you shouldn't use AOL", while ostensibly a tech related matter, is perhaps also a 'culture' thing :)

[JeffHeaton]

I've often heard this cited as one of the orignal "beef's" with AOL. The Eternal September.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

[tayspen]

>i don't sit here flicking the capslock button
Shift happens.

lol that was funny i laughed :p

[tayspen]

The Problem

The ultimate marketing plan. Push free samples of a drug until people are addicted and then charge them a fortune and make them afraid to quit. Except it's not a drug. It's a way for people to access the Internet -- web, email, and all -- that's so easy, you don't have to have the slightest clue what you're doing after months (or even years) of use. And you may not even be concerned about who you are annoying across the globe with using all capital letters or other breaches of netiquette.

After you pop in the free AOL CD-ROM in one of it's many incarnations and endless color schemes, you're on your way to establishing a buyer habit that will cost you wads of cash, your freedom of non-AOL/Time-Warner news and shopping, and even your respect in the eyes of people who would otherwise consider doing business with you. It's amazing AOL even tried to market it for small businesses.

I have never heard of ANYONE switching to AOL after using real internet tools to surf the WHOLE world wide web. Like Earthlink's switch-from-AOL campaign said, "It's time to take off the trainer's wheels."

Advice

(1) DO NOT install AOL if you plan to use any other web browsers, dialups, or mail clients. If it's too late, uninstall all of them and re-install.

(2) DO not install (or uninstall) more than one version of AOL on your system. It DOES NOT UPGRADE well, but instead gives you multiple copies of files, multiple shortcuts, etc..

(3) DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES install any BETA (experimental) version for testing. Do not be AOL's guinea pig, unless you don't mind potentially loosing everything on your system. Such things should be left to the experts using test PCs. Wait until the bugs are out before you even think about upgrading ANY software, especially from AOL.

I hope you have found this information useful. Hopefully now any AOL users browsing this forum will dump their crappy excuse for an ISP! ;)

cheers

Ph, trust me..i would if i could

[JANINE]

i've used AOL before and when i was using it i had to reinstall my O/S more times then i care to count. it is a virus and its one that Norton cant kill. Norton doesn't even recognise it.

Norton is good

AOL 'arses on line'

NEVER AGAIN!!! im with virgin.net isp now and they're as good as gold.:)

[Catweazle]

heh heh.....

Are you likening it to a 'virus' because it's son intrusive and hard to get rid of? If so, then I can't help but notice that to do something about it you're using Norton's, which would be my 'top of the list' for nasty, intrusive, bug-ridden, hard to get rid of rubbish programs of all time!

[Rashakil Fol]

Before:

compiler.exe ... -o aol_8.9.exe

After:

compiler.exe -O3 ... -o AOL_9.0_OPTIMIZED!!!111!.exe

At least that's my theory :-)

[JANINE]

heh heh.....

Are you likening it to a 'virus' because it's son intrusive and hard to get rid of? If so, then I can't help but notice that to do something about it you're using Norton's, which would be my 'top of the list' for nasty, intrusive, bug-ridden, hard to get rid of rubbish programs of all time!

I've been using norton for the last 5 years and its only AOL that seemed to cause the problems. Virus dinner party any1 - cos thats all AOL introduced for me. As i said though virgin are great. Great everything right down to the responses you get from their customer services team.

AOL on the other hand... dont go there. i mailed them with an urgent problem and it took 6 WEEKS for them to get back to me.

im happy thats all that matters at the end of the day.:)

add to this im still gettings discs through my door and their stupid time magazines. anyone want a free bird scarer;)

[bluedos82]

I have had experience with AOHell... er.. I mean AOL. I didn't like the service. Plus, it was SOOOOOO SLOOOOOWWW... but then again, that is how dial-up is. we still can't get broadband out here, but we can get wireless. That is what we use now.
Plus, I have done service on people's computers that have AOHell and they have the same issues... not connecting, too slow, bad customer service.
Plus, AOHell is a lot like Microsoft.... they don't want to take over the ENTIRE world, they just want your half with theirs.

[JANINE]

Plus, AOHell is a lot like Microsoft.... they don't want to take over the ENTIRE world, they just want your half with theirs.

are you sure that they dont want to take over the whole world (AOHell sorry AOL i mean). with the amount of bird scarers they produce i wouldn't be surprised if that is their intention. they dont just want half, they want all. greedy buggers.:)

[goldeagle2005]

Oh man! Thanks, jwenting! How could I forget to mention the affect of their advertising?! I believe AOL has produced enough cdroms to cover the entire surface of planet earth to a depth of 3.5 feet. Maybe that's an exaggeration. ;)

3.4897 feet, actually. And counting