For the life of me I don't understand why people use AOL. There are so many choices out there. The local providers always my first choice, most of them don't want to install software on your computer, but will do so to make things easier for you. You only need to know a few simple steps to make a dial-up connection work, and normally the technical support of the ISP will give you this information as you sign up, or if you try and call them when your sitting in front of the computer, they will give you the information you need.

If you use windows (since most of the english speeking people do). You just goto my network places, create a new network connection. Follow the prompts.

You will need three vital pieces of info.

1. Login name & password.
2. TCP/IP address.
3. DNS address.

With those three pieces of info, you can be on the net without installing any additional software to bog down your computer.

AOL is very advertising intensive, having little pop-ups in all these little places to try and sell you crap you probably don't want or need. When I hear about people on AOL and I ask them why, their reply... and this always makes me shake my head in pity... is "it was easy". To me the initial difficulty of not having someone's software on my computer that I have no desire to have there, far out weighs the ease of sign up, and being told what I can and can't look at on the internet. There are legal restrictions for very few items that the internet provides, those legal barriers I feel are more than enough.

If AOL works for you, enjoy. If you get frustrated by it, why are you still using it, and paying them money to be a crappy company?

V/R
ID