The Daily Ping

FROM: Robert
DATE: Sunday May 20, 2001 -- 5:38:09PM

They also gave infrequent Pinger Brant something to brag about (to wit: "Ya know, AOL started down the street from me").

FROM: Cat
DATE: Sunday May 20, 2001 -- 10:39:20PM

They give me an instant out of answering newbie questions. "Nope, sorry, don't know a thing about them AOL attachments."

FROM: Dave
DATE: Wednesday May 23, 2001 -- 10:30:49AM

I love AOL because they raised their prices by $2.00

FROM: Robert
DATE: Wednesday May 23, 2001 -- 10:41:24AM

Their name is far too close to "AWOL" for my tastes.

FROM: Paul
DATE: Wednesday May 23, 2001 -- 11:03:41AM

Dave, yes, AOL is a poor company, didn't you know? I love 'em.

FROM: Marcus
DATE: Tuesday July 24, 2001 -- 5:54:02PM

Well, as someone that grew up on and grew to hate the wonderful "spinning wheel" (Mac) or "hours of hour glass sand trickling" (PC), I can empathisize with the LOVE of AOL ::coughing::

;)

In truth, AOL does do somethings elementally correct. I mean, let's face the facts, installation of an ISP for a novice is a BIG issue unless you have your own family techie (which I unfortunately am ::groaning::).

However installation ease vs. uptime ease, stability of software, and logic of interface puzzle me greatly. Ever since the addition of that ghastly toolbar, my main question was... "Why?". AOL prior logically placed everything within the menubar, rather than eat up extra screen real estate. Not to mention, having the URL bar tethered to the toolbar means that you can't "EASILY" have multiple windows at once, something I do in IE, Opera, and Netscape quite often (btw, latest build of Mozilla isn't too bad).

I would guess AOL is another in that "great" list of wannabe ISP's for dummies. Toss in the ubiquitous eWorld, along with the likes of Compuserve, the old Prodigy, MSN, and varying others.

Do I think it's necessary, perhaps to novices, then again, Earthlink's installer is amazingly well done (if you've never seen it on Mac you've missed out), and well... the minor effort involved with learning browser, e-mail client, etc. etc. pays dividends in the end (not to mention for those that are RAM-conscious like myself; probably will be until my next computer purchase as Fastpage RAM isn't cheap even at today's prices)

FROM: Marcus
DATE: Tuesday July 24, 2001 -- 5:58:46PM

However, the one great thing about AOL, has always been their Messenger. However, even it has grown bloated, unstable, and bannered to the hilt. I have a krak I ran on my version of AIM to make it banner-free; however... stability issues remain. Another sign of a great product, facing competition, and eventually leading to the great downfall of tremendous products, which I tend to call:

featuritis

which leads to:

bloat