AOL

[shaun]

Oh, but Tiscali are excellent if you want always-on dialup that doesn't use your phone line and you're too cheap to pay £3 more per month for the likes of BT.

[James Martin]

Do AOL still force you to use their shit software for everything, fucking up your PC in the process?

[all new Phil]

My dad has AOL, I don't recall his computer being "fucked up". Really, I don't understand the fuss about AOL, they are good at what they intend to do, which is provide easy-to-use internet for those who aren't particularly good with computers. Stop being so frigging snobby! Yes, we all know about computers and so we find it basic, but for someone like my dad it's perfect.

[awaiting disection by cwathen or someone telling me how wrong I am and how rubbish my face is]

Also, there is now an option with AOL to just use the dialer, similar to most other ISPs, whereby you dial up with it and you can use IE etc without opening AOL.

[Sput]

It's a bugger with a router, slow and locks you into a 12 month contract. THAT is why I don't like it.

Ass

And JM, it's probably the kiddie porn virii that do that to your computer

[Chris]

Also, there is now an option with AOL to just use the dialer, similar to most other ISPs, whereby you dial up with it and you can use IE etc without opening AOL.

But with other ISPs there is no need to install the crap software, be it a dialler or anything else. With other dial up ISPs, you can simply make a new dialup connection by using the wizard in network connections.

[Pete]

Also, there is now an option with AOL to just use the dialer, similar to most other ISPs, whereby you dial up with it and you can use IE etc without opening AOL.

But with other ISPs there is no need to install the crap software, be it a dialler or anything else. With other dial up ISPs, you can simply make a new dialup connection by using the wizard in network connections.

with AOL broadband you just logon using [email protected] and your password. That's how I got my friend's mac working with it

Slight tangent now. Why does my pack for Pipex tell me to dial 0,32 when dialing 0 works perfectly well. Why do i even have to dial a number at all? I would research this myself but I have better things to do.

[Lorns]

Well for someone who has rarely had a problem with said service provider but at the moment AOL is really bumming me out.

It is of course a software problem and absolutely nothing to do with the user
* angelic look with nice shiny halo*

[James Martin]

Well I remember that in the 90s the sortware and builtin browser was bloody retarted - takes me back to 1997 does shitty old AOL.

[cwathen]

[awaiting disection by cwathen or someone telling me how wrong I am and how rubbish my face is]

Why would I say how wrong you are? I think AOL are actually pretty good for their target audience. I just see that audience ever dwindling as increasing numbers of people become more computer literate and realise that you can get by without paying more for AOL.

Your face on the other hand is just rubbish

i signed up for the 100 hour trial, must been about 5 years ago and i STILL get CDs through the post, and I still recieve a copy of Time magazine every month.

Anyone remember AOL getting into trouble with their 720 hour free trial? In case you didn't get where the number came from, that's the number of hours in a 30 day month. But AOL required you to use your free hours within 1 month of signing up. This meant that if any part of your trial was in February, it was impossible to use the full entitlement of the trial.

ISTR that following someone accusing AOL of mis-selling their product, they hurriedly replaced all references to '1 calendar month' in their small print with '30 days'.

i hated the fact that despite it was a trial i needed to enter my debit card number, and it was a real pain to cancel (mainly because i canceled before my trail had expired - within about 5 days i think).... i seem to remember being passed around a fair bit and then had to "justify" why i wanted to cancel.

This is because it wasn't a 'try before you buy' deal. It was a 'buy now but don't pay anything for the first month and have the option to cancel during the first month' - which of course meant that if you didn't want it the onus was on you to remember to cancel as opposed to them successfully selling it to you. Legally, they'd allready sold you the product as soon as you registered.

I'd stay away from Tiscali, it's very hit-and-miss and speeds are very variable.

I've always thought of Tiscali as one of the most pioneering ISPs around. A few years ago they were offering 150K 'broadband' for £15 / month. This sounds crap now, especially since 512K had been around for a few years previously, but Tiscali's lower speed product meant that they were the first company around to offer something faster than a modem (and 150K is still 4 times faster than the average '56K' connection, and faster than ISDN which was still around at the time) for less than £30 / month.

Aswell as that, they always provide the fastest physical connection possible, and then artificially limit the speed down to the level you have paid for through software. This means that any upgrades you pay for appear instantly, and you know in advance the maximum speed your line supports (i.e. my parents know they can go all the way to 2Mbps tomorrow if they want it, without any delay, even though they presently only have 256K).

[Sput]

I can't fault them on WHAT they're offering, but so many people have speed issues, and even more have billing issues, that it's really too risky a contract for any sane person to take on.