Fly in the face. (AOL)

Member Name: imagin8or

Product:	AOL
Date:	08/07/01 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They're kitted out for high demand, but they haven't got such highly continuous use, it isn't a bad price

Disadvantages: Some people do have problems, quite a few, actually.

I'm gonna play the AOL's advocate here. I've had AOL6 installed for 3 days as of 08/07/01, and I haven't had a problem so far. In fact AOL has been one of the more stable apps on my PC (mine's full of gunk atm and most things crash at some point :( ).

We got a £300 phone bill the other day and decided that we'd have to sign up with one of these flat raters to prevent us from spending £250 a quarter on internet calls. Our first attempt was with BT, and after about 2 hours of hell (see my op of BTinternet) we gave up. I then thought of using AOL. Now I'm a moderately experienced net user, not some newbie (sorry newbie guys...) and I was horrified at the thought of joining AOL, grail of such people. But then it occurred to me. AOL had to have enough capacity to deal with all these hoards of people dialing up at 5.30 when they get home, but when I wanted to use it (during the day - I'm a student :) ) they wouldn't be on and I'd have a larger capacity to play with.

Some of my friends use the cheaper, smaller operations like 08002go, but as one commented recently 'they all give up after a few months', and its true. He personally doesn't mind switching every few months, but since this is for my family (and my during holidays) I thought it better to get someone more stable. AOL has probably seen a downturn in business when all the flat rate ISPs turn up, so I thought they've probably not got the overuse problems of BT, LineOne etc. So we signed up. Three days in it seems fine. No AOL keeling over as some people get, quite a fast connection. Overall pretty good. Also I think the low-tech user interface approach will suit my family as they find their internet feet.

Me? I'll be off to university again, but this time in an ntl broadband enabled house... streaming video, here I come.

So my advice? If you can get over the thought of trying AOL and you think their rate is quite compet
itive, back up your PC's hard disk, install AOL and try it. If the worst happens, and you get the problems some other people seem to get, give up and go back to your backups. On the other hand, it might just work - AOL seems in the right situation at the moment to handle high demand users.

Try it. You might like it. I'd recommend backups though, enough people have problems to make it worth doing.

Happy surfing.

Summary: