Review Of America Online

Personally, I can take or leave America Online. In the past, the dialup service was among the worst of any provider that I've ever used. The internet service was horrible and completely unreliable, and I've never, ever gotten so much SPAM as I got from my AOL account.

And it's expensive. At $20 or so a month it's right up their in price with any other expensive ISP and since AOL is so awful it's easy to say "well, just get rid of it and get someone else".

And two years ago that's what I thought. I had just gotten ISDN through Pacbell and I was very happy (hey, it's better than 28.8, which is what I had at the time). I was looking for ways to streamline the budget and the $20 a month for AOL jumped right out at me. Why keep this junk?

So without thinking I disconnected the service. Man, did I pay for that little quick decision!!!

My teenager, it seemed, had a personal life that revolved around AOL's chat rooms and instant messages. Personally, I've always been too busy creating web sites and working to have any interest at all in chat rooms, but apparently life is different for today's teenagers.

He screamed, he cried, he whined and he held his breath and turned purple. He HAD to have his AOL back. How could he talk to his friends? He would have to CALL them or see them, and it seemed like this was too much.

Then I realized he was talking about calling them on the phone - long distance. Oops. Visions of hundreds of dollars a month in phone bills went through my head. AOL is a lot cheaper than the phone.

I gently suggested he use ICQ through the internet. No, all of his friends were on AOL. ICQ or even Instant Messenger would not work. He would not even try them.

I bowed to the inevitable and re-signed up for AOL. But this time I got a little smarter - I got the "bring your own access" feature.

And all of the problems went away. You see, AOL is great except for one thing - their dialup access is horrible. But their communities and groups are wonderful, especially, it seems, for my teenager.

Would I recommend AOL? Not really. But it is a lot cheaper than phone calls, and it does keep the kid out of trouble (well, mostly).