Sometimes I think people dislike AOL for the same reason they dislike
Microsoft. Too much power in one place. Before the Internet became popular
there were a number of online services, AOL, CompuServe, Genie and Prodigy,
and perhaps a few others which were short lived. All of these online
services were probably on equal footing (at least by reputation) at that
time. They all had some customers. No one service was dominating the
market. AOL was probably one of the least promising of these and yet by
smary tactics normally associated with fly-by-night salesman they managed to
fool the neophyte users of the budding Internet and online users.
Some of my personal peeves with AOL run along these lines...
1) One of the ways that AOL rose to power was by mail bombing the world
with its installation disks
2) They also used / use false advertising to position themselves as an
Internet Service Provider even though they are not. AOL is not an Internet
Service Provider. AOL is an online service which provides Internet access.
There is a difference there.
3) They have a proprietary dialer which won't interface with the normal
windows dial-up networking.
4) At one time to get an AOL account you either had to have a credit card
or give them direct access to your checking account. Since I didn't have a
credit card I gave them my checking account number. Even after I canceled
my account they continued to take money from my account. It was a real
battle to get them to stop doing this.
I can probably think of a few more...
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 02:23 PM
Subject: Re: * informant * Recent letter to my ISP
> Hi all,since disability has brought a computer and AOL into my life,six
years
> ago,I've read countless articles on AOL being good for the inexperienced
> user. A stepping stone to other better services. I've been a member for 6
> years,and while I've had problems using other ISPs to connect,they've been
> OK. I'd love to know the difference between AOL and other
> providers,especially what makes the other services better. I'm not
sticking
> up for AOL,since so many people don't like them,including Fred Langa,there
> must be some fire. I'm just wondering for my own personal knowledge.
Thanks
>
>
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