Yada Yada AOL yada...

King Goldfish

King Goldfish

Who here uses AOL? I have a free 6 month account after buying getting a new dell (I financed it cuzz i be poor)

so umm, The onlything I could find good about AOL is the Radio XM. very high bandwith. I know winamp has the same thing for free but their bandwith is crud. AOL radio is CD quality. But it doent justify 25 bucks a month.

I pay 23 a month for the pro level of DSL.

:|


just wondering what else I can do with AOL. I can talk on a voiceless chatroom with annoying people like i c an on IRC for free.

I can umm... Access the internet through their crappy browser.

anything else? :huh:
 
Actually, you can use AOL just as an ISP and still annoy people on IRC, use Firefox or exploder as a browser, use iTunes to access radio stations and podcasts. Anything you would do through any other dialup ISP. It's been a long time since I've done any of that through AOL though, so I can't for the life of me remember specifically what's involved in moving away from their software. Call and ask their tech support how to use other applications through their service.
 
King Goldfish: Not ALL the winamp streams are crap.. check out the shoutcast list.. some of them have decent bandwidth. If you like 80s, I highly reccommend 'Club 977' And for techno and the like, the 'DIGITALLY IMPORTED' streams are good. Looks like Club 977 has a new 'hits' channel too..

Any on the shoutcast list with a bitrate of 128 should be "cd quality" (more like FM, but good anyway)

EDIT: Digitally Imported offers a BIG list of channels, virtually every flavor of 'electronica' and a bunch of other genres through their SKY.FM section.. click the link above, and then check out the menu under 'listen now' ... the free streams are 96kbit/sec versus 128kbit, but still sound like a decent FM signal.
 
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AOL were the creators of Netscape, no?

Crappy browser, in my opinon (once they AOLified it), but the team that did that went on to form Mozilla, so AOL is partly/indirectly responsible for Firefox... and for that, they must be given some redemption... but I'd never subscribe to thier service...

I'm working at a call center for XM Radio, and they're alright... if you want to pay $12.95/month for radio... not TOO bad, but I'd rather just have a CD collection and an Ipod...
 
No.. AOL bought Netscape, they didn't design it....

Netscape (the parent company of the browser, prior to the buyout) released the source code, which was then developed by many many people in the open-source community, eventually becomming firefox & thunderbird, the current products available from mozilla. Your facts weren't quite right, but close enough I guess..
 
Really, the only thing AOL has to offer is their own content.

For most people that means proprietary AOL chat rooms and bulletin boards.

*flashback* I was on AOL (before it was AOL) when having more than 23 members online at once was a major event. Wow... I feel so old again...
 
All you need is high-speed Internet. AOL targets computer newbies, making them think they will never get spam, and only with AOL, etc.
 
How very true indie... and all the different ISPs have their own gimmicks as to why they're better and whatnot..

I actually, didn't even know my comcast email address or password until I recently bought a new cable modem, and they asked me about it. Never bothered to set it up, since all I needed was a connection, no frilly services or anything. ;)
 
SPaulovich said:
Really, the only thing AOL has to offer is their own content.

For most people that means proprietary AOL chat rooms and bulletin boards.

*flashback* I was on AOL (before it was AOL) when having more than 23 members online at once was a major event. Wow... I feel so old again...
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I was on AOL as early as 1993. I know it used to be called something else (forget what it was called) but i recall a friend using it back then.

I think everyone missed the point. im not using AOL as my ISP server. I use SBC dsl.

I just got AOL for free for 6 months so I decided to set it up. I actually wanted to get my mom on the computer and I set it up for her as a dialup since she's not really into computers other then playing solitare.


But yeah, AOL is just pure crap for 25 bucks a month. i think they bulls*** the world into thinking they actually have millions of users. The truth is this, I think they have millions of users created by maybe 2 or 3 hundred thousand existing users, many using their free trials.

Why would they tell the world they have so many users? To help pad their stock value. More users = more stock value. But its bogus. In the 1990s it was a pretty cool network. I used to use it to download free trial or software. When much of it was shareware like Paint Shop Pro.

I cant imagine anyone using it and actually paying for the service. Netscape and other simular services are far cheaper. Like 9 bucks a month with the dialup excelerators. But my DSL is only 23 bucks a month with near cable speeds while the basic teer DSL is 14 bucks a month. Why pay 25 bucks for a piece of crap ISP? :huh: :huh:
 
Good luck trying to quit AOL. One of my friends asked me to call because he couldn't the operator at AOL to cancle his account. Well, lets just say it took three calls and a lot of swearing and yelling to get them to finally deactivate the account.
Also did you know that AOL is the leading PRODUCER of spyware in the US? Just a little tid bit.
 
cnomad3d said:
Good luck trying to quit AOL. One of my friends asked me to call because he couldn't the operator at AOL to cancle his account. Well, lets just say it took three calls and a lot of swearing and yelling to get them to finally deactivate the account.
Also did you know that AOL is the leading PRODUCER of spyware in the US? Just a little tid bit.
Click to expand...

Haha.> this board should have a conspiracy forum. I agree. I also wonder what McAfee and Norton does inside their research rooms. Perhaps they actually create the virus that they defeat? Think about it, 95% of their researchers look for the trojans the other 5% create in some hidden wing of their facility.

BTW, I get the funny feeling AOL purchased WinAmp. they got all their crap videos littering winamp. also, AOL purchased Moviefone. So you have to have AOLs stupid movie plugin to view trailers.
 
cnomad3d said:
Good luck trying to quit AOL. One of my friends asked me to call because he couldn't the operator at AOL to cancle his account. Well, lets just say it took three calls and a lot of swearing and yelling to get them to finally deactivate the account.
Also did you know that AOL is the leading PRODUCER of spyware in the US? Just a little tid bit.
Click to expand...

Like the mafia... once you in ther eis no out. Only in a body bag (or PC skip)
 
King Goldfish said:
I just got AOL for free for 6 months so I decided to set it up. I actually wanted to get my mom on the computer and I set it up for her as a dialup since she's not really into computers other then playing solitare.
Click to expand...

...sounds like my mom, I've been trying to give her my pc, which she said she wanted, since JULY...

...I am on MSN myself, its about $21 per month and I am pretty happy with it. It does what I want it to, which is keep up with my email and generally seems to leave me alone :) I also like their search engine. I have avoided AOL since they initially would crash so much....

...and I think that maybe AOL used to be Prodigy or something like that (I'm old, too:) )

--spinner :cool:
 
spinner said:
...sounds like my mom, I've been trying to give her my pc, which she said she wanted, since JULY...

...I am on MSN myself, its about $21 per month and I am pretty happy with it. It does what I want it to, which is keep up with my email and generally seems to leave me alone :) I also like their search engine. I have avoided AOL since they initially would crash so much....

...and I think that maybe AOL used to be Prodigy or something like that (I'm old, too:) )

--spinner :cool:
Click to expand...

MSN is a dialup, right? SBC DSL is 23 bucks a month for pro level DSL and 14.95 for basic. even the basic is like 30 times faster then the boosted 5x dialup. MSN might be decent but i wouldnt pay more then 9 bucks a month for a dialup system. Especially with free internet being introduced into most major cities. If you ever travel for business, you can always leave your hotel for a local McDonalds or go on a network driveby
 
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Will Vincent said:
It was "America Online" before they shortened it to AOL (or AOHELL as it's more fondly known)
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AOHell was actually a bot program. It was pretty funny. In the 90s you could do all kinds of cool stuff with it. The one thing I never used and hated when others would use was the "Text manipulation" tool. Making someone tell the Guide to Eff off and watching them get dropped from the room. actually, it was funny at times but not when it happened to you :no: :cool:
 
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