[BC] Re: Why AOL

[Xmitters@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/3/07 12:00:29 AM Central Daylight Time, 
broadcast-request at radiolists.net writes:

<< What I cannot fathom is why ANYone uses AOL in the first place.    What't th
e point (attraction)? why not just use your local ISP?    Dave Dunsmoor   >>

Dave: 

The explanation is quite simple. Before I get into that, I cannot FATHOM why 
anyone would discredit AOL without having thechnical/business grounds for 
doing so. Why not share them with us?

Here are my reasons. When you sign on to AOL, you get a little JPG picture 
showing the top news story at that time. AOL consistently "scoops" NPR. 

AOL has outstanding reliability regarding email transmission. I can count on 
one hand, the times I could not send or receive email via AOL (The only email 
problem I've had in nearly 10 years of membership, is that some of my emails 
failed to post to this very list depending on the computer I use. That seems to
 
be fixed now.) because their system was screwed up. I also have very little 
use for Internet entities that filter out AOL email transmissions, simply 
because it is "AOL." This is the 21st century folks.  If email is sending out 
something you don't like, then filter THAT; not every email that originates fro
m 
AOL client not engaged in spamming.

I would however need more fingers than those on one hand, to count the 
problems I have had with campus email over a couple weeks' time. If I take too 
long 
to write an email, the campus server times out and I lose my work when I go to 
send it! The IT droids here suggest that I write with MSWord, then edit-copy, 
Edit-paste. Why are people so willing to do so much extra screwing around to 
do something simple ???

With AOL, I can take all bloody day long to type an email, and AOL will not 
kick me off and thus, lose my email as in the case of campus email.

I like the edit-copy, edit-past feature when responding to a list post; I 
highlight that part of the post I'm responding to, then write my two cents. Tha
t 
is difficult if not impossible, with Microsoft Outlook. I have no reason to 
learn yet another email client just so I can say that I don't use AOL.

Regarding the one-line message appended by AOL to my outgoings, I am not 
happy about that either, but can live with it. If however, that ends up causing
 my 
email not to post because someone at the receiving end does not like it, I'm 
more than unhappy about that. That amounts to censorship. As long as I 
continue to use the service, then I am approving that message appendage. I have
 a 
reasonable expectation that my mail go through without being censored. I am not
 
accusing anyone here, or anywhere else, of anything. I'm merely stating a 
position.  

I also like the easily managed email archival feature of AOL. 

AOL client software is intuitive. I don't have to read a manual or FAQ file 
to learn how to set up email blocks, etc. I have no idea on how to do that with
 
Micro$oft Outlook. Outlook is a poor excuse for an email client. Reading an 
email is considered a Tool, while writing an email is to Compose. I think 
sending and receiving are both Tools and should be listed that way for an intui
tive 
feel. Actually "Sending" the email IS a Tool. However I have to "compose" an 
email first. All this is easier with AOL.

What I don't like however, is that the archive is of a proprietary format, 
and I cannot merge one archive from one machine with the archive file from 
another  machine. My AOL archives are thus spread over four different machines,
 
which is a PITA. 

I do dislike AOL's political slant in the manner in which they pick the 
photographs to illustrate the top news story. If the story is a criticism, then
 
they show the person who is the object of that criticism with a picture in a le
ss 
than complimentary pose. very sophomoric. That however, does not change the 
timely mature of their news reporting. 

I DO NOT use AOL as my connection pipe to the Internet. The university gives 
me a dialup account when I need that, and I have Comcast High Speed Internet. 
AOL is basically used for my email client. I also have a couple websites on 
AOL. If for no other reason, I could use AOL to store my HTML documents and hav
e 
the index.html served up from an entirely different domain, and I do just 
that. 

There are many legitimate reasons for using AOL and it has a lot of 
advantages. The bottom line is however, based on what's important to a particul
ar user.


Jeff Glass
Northern Illinois University
**************************************
 See what's free at http://www.aol.com.