Laurabelle's Blog

I kind of hate to put this in the geek category, because AOL has nothing to do with geekdom in any form, but it goes there more than anywhere else. I hate AOL with a passion. I'm tied to it because my landlords, with whom I share DSL service, are AOL users. I do my best to ignore it, but it's really annoying to have to sign on with the AOL client before I minimize it and go on with my business.

AOL 7.0 was on one of the installation CDs that came with my laptop, so that was the first client I installed. Pete recommended that I upgrade to 8.0, so I did, and I had nasty problems with it causing Delilah to crash if it was running when I hibernated her. I'm sure it made her less reliable, but it was bearable.

So when 9.0 (optimized for broadband, according to AOL) came along, I jumped at the chance to get rid of pesky 8.0. I should have stayed put; as soon as I installed the new version, I couldn't connect at all. I tried everything I could think of, but I ended up uninstalling everything and reinstalling 7.0, which is what I'm using now, and it works absolutely fine. It starts up faster than the later versions, and fewer frills is absolutely fine with me. The only drawback I've noticed is that the occasional spam I get isn't filtered out. (I really shouldn't be getting spam at all, since Kevin is the only person I've ever told about that address, and I highly doubt that he's trying to sell me prescription drugs.)

Mostly AOL's bearable, except that sometimes I have to sign in twice before it goes through properly, and sometimes the connection gets cut. Yesterday evening was horrible; the client couldn't find the server the whole evening. Maybe it was due to weather, but it would have been the last straw for me, if it were my choice. Unfortunately AOL DSL is better than no DSL, so I've got no bargaining power. Pete keeps making noises about switching to a Real ISP; I wish he would hurry up and do it.