how-to block ads
|
|
Uniqs:
729 |
Share Topic
 |
 |
|
|
 C0deZer0Oc'D To Rhythm And PolicePremium
join:2001-10-03
Davenport, FL | DIE AOL!!! I really don't see why webmasters don't just go to block AOL IP's from accessing their service. It would certainly allow the internet (in general) become 80% smarter. 
I have used AOL before, back when 98SE was new, 32MB RAM was considered "good enough", and AOL 5 *just* came out. I didn't choose to get it (my brother & mom - who didn't know much better about the internet - got it, and I was already used to using IE 4 from the library).
Boy, we were in for a ride... 
Parental controls just caused the thing to crash and kick you off even over sites that (when pulled up elsewhere), you wouldn't even think would have triggered any such controls (like a nazi firewall ). It just seemed to be there to purposely cause the client to crash at will.
the IM client ironically is the worst thing about AOL. Even their AIM client is more advanced by comparison. You cannot direct-connect or even send a file to an AOL user for anything. And within AOL, you can't even send a file to someone and continue using the program. It physically locks itself until you either cancel the process, or the file is completed. One step forward, 14 steps back.
Email through AOL is a joke. When you receive it from an AOL user (that hasn't bothered to modify the default settings), it comes in this garbled jumble of HTML, that typically makes it ridiculously hard for anyone to read. And who would want to see how those emails look like? Using the same background color as the text, sickly yellow backgrounds with vomit-colored animations. Loads of animated GIFs within the email content... ugh! Speaking of the email, anyone here remember when they tried to force AOL execs to use their own ISP's email service? Obviously, that turned out to be a huge failure. In some cases, sending AOL email would be slower than snail mail.
Also, the client UI is certainly way too damn kiddie. I'm surprised that with as many people that hated Windows XP for its "teletubbie" interface, that they don't just go ahead and rip a new a-hole into the blatantly poor copy of said look that AOL has done with their newer browsers as of late. I've seen how AOL 3.0 looked like once, and I didn't think it could get any uglier. Obviously, it just did. And the worst part is that you cannot even adjust it, whether to only have text links within there, or just only pictures viewable... the interface practically takes about 30% of the visible screenspace, which is something that the original designer of the app should be shot for.
You'd think an ISP as large as AOL could at least get one thing right - reliability. Though with my previous experience with them, this is something that they have failed miserably in (for dialup). And from what I have heard from more recent subscribers have been telling me locally, it has only got worse. Busy signals, long periods of waiting to connect, and the surreptitious modem-screeching just makes the dial-up experience worse than L.A. during the rodney king riot. And the fact that you still need to "sign in" with the broadband version of their software leaves much to desire. The email farce that the AOL execs had is an obvious testament to how badly they have failed to meet the demand of their formerly humongous subscriberhood.
The chat rooms alone are full of pedophiles and very deranged people, if anyone has ever visited any of these. chat flooding, spamming through the rooms, and hten a few that would sign you up for pr0n mailings just for looking them up!  And you know that the TOS doesn't do squat to many of them - they even go as far as make the offenders into "assistant mods" on their network, able to kick you off with the click of a mouse. It certainly gets a little annoying when you get IM'd by someone wanting your password for the umpteenth time only to get auto-booted for denying them.
And anyone that has used their client software for any good length of time will tell you that the thing is set up for window hell. Before long, you would have about 40 internal windows within the app, and you still can't close the "welcome!" screen without getting kicked offline. said by typical AOL session:
"Wel--GOODBYE!GOODBYE!GOODBYE!GOODBYE!
please sign on again."
And as if you couldn't have *enough* windows just running the software like you were supposed to, AOL had to deviously leave it so that it will auto-spawn popups for their vendors that will kick you off if you tried to click them off, because surely enough, one of them will say said by AOL auto-kickoff popup:
you've been signed on for 0.4 seconds! would you like to sign off now?
For paying a minimum $24/month for "unlimited access", they sure want you off pretty fast.
And the stability of the software? What a laugh. After about a month when I was stuck using only AOL 5, it had already deleted himem.sys, leaving us unable to boot to windows, or much else. At the time, we didn't really know what else to do except reformat. That doesn't even account for the 50 BSOD's a day the thing would cause after it was installed. :(:(
And then what was funny was when I first got my own machine. Just clicking the (preinstalled by gateway ) AOL icon by accident and it had practically took over my computer, locking it up and trying to get on after all the times I hit cancel. It took a rather lengthy procedure to finally get back to running the machine like normal. And forget about trying to uninstall it, since AOL's software will purposely destroy your system files so that it will never be stable without it afterward. It doesn't matter if it's AOL, AIM, or even Realplayer now. They all equally screw over the machine, and only give me the impression that the whole development "team" over at America Online is made up of pre-school toddlers that are using some kind of 7-year-old auto-generator for their code.
After finally convincing my mom and brother to get OFF the madness and get a real ISP, that's when we got to find out the [sarcasm]BEST PART of the service![/sarcasm] - trying to cancel the thing. It took several, lengthy long-distance calls, a trial lawyer, and even ripping up the credit cards to get new ones in order to shake those bastards off.
You couldn't pay me enough to use their god-awful service again. And that's the last word.
--
Why I hate VIA | |
 Frankis chillingPremium
join:2000-11-03
somewhere | dude i hate to tell you this because i only read the first paragraph of your post but..........
even in windows98 1st edition days 32mb of ram wasnt considered good enough. :P | |
| reply to C0deZer0
lets see you had 32mb of ram that's problem #1, as far as jumbled e-mails prior to version 5.0 you had to download a mime decoder, just a simple little program that unjumbled the stuff, any e-mail where you don't like the background all you had to do is right click on the e-mail and click "clear background"....
[text was edited by author 2003-08-01 22:27:44] | |
wentlancYou Can't Fix Dumb..
join:2003-07-30
Maineville, OH | I know you're not going to believe it Taurus, but I agree with you!! 
Windows 98 uses 38 megs of RAM with nothing else installed. And you were probably having many other problems directly related to memory. The absolute worst thing to run under Win98 is memory managers like himem.sys and 16bit DOS based drivers. You should not need anything loaded in the config.sys on a Win98 machine. No CDROM drivers, no sound card drivers, nothing. And for goodness sake, if one of those is accidentally loaded, please do not load it into upper memory. They have begun using this memory space for other things now and your machine will crash!
puritan | |
| said by wentlanc:
I know you're not going to believe it Taurus, but I agree with you!!
::::recovering from falling out of my chair right now:::: | |
C0deZer0Oc'D To Rhythm And PolicePremium
join:2001-10-03
Davenport, FL | reply to wentlanc
Uh, guys...
I'm not even using the machine I described in my rant anymore. I ditched that POS years ago. | |
| My Windows 95 machine, which I bought like 6 months before Windows 98 came out, had 128MB of RAM. Maybe your machine was severely underpowered when you bought it. | |
| said by TazExprez:
My Windows 95 machine, which I bought like 6 months before Windows 98 came out, had 128MB of RAM. Maybe your machine was severely underpowered when you bought it.
Actually, some computers were very much underpowered for when they came out. Here's 2 examples:
My first computer was a reconditioned Compaq purchased in 98 but on the market in 95 (a friend had the same computer bought new), here's what it was: P100, 16ram, 1g harddrive, 14.4 modem (I took mine up to P166, 80ram, 4g harddrive, 56 modem)
My parents bought a new Aptiva in 97: P133, 32ram, 3g harddrive, 28 modem
My computer was upgradeable to 128ram, my parents only to 64 if you can believe it. | | |
|
| I agree. That PC was pretty high end when I bought it and cost me about $3800. | |
wentlancYou Can't Fix Dumb..
join:2003-07-30
Maineville, OH | reply to Taurus333
There were still a lot of people pushing low grade boards out the door. That was just before the 200MMX became available. Also, just before 98 came out, manufacturers realized that people needed more RAM just to be able to run the bare OS.
puritan | |
|
