An online lover?. Review on AOL ISP

Well, hope you liked my title, it's (AOL) not really that good.

AOL (America On Line) is quite good, in that £15 a month covers all your call costs for the whole month, and gives you access 24/7.

BT Internet do this, although I find them to be awful, and I rarely get a connection with them (2 connections in 6 months of trying to be precise!). That's enough about BT, and back to AOL.

AOL as I've already said, gives you unlimited access for £15 a month (no they're not paying me to say that.) However, it does have its drawbacks.

Firstly, I am a bit sick of it crashing, it seems to happen most often when I close dialogue boxes down, although rarely I do get messages saying 'your connection to AOL has been lost.' This generally happens when:

a) your at a vital moment of playing WWTBAM i.e. the £500000 question

b) you are talking to someone, and when you sign back on they have gone, thinking you don't want to speak to them

c) you are writing an incredibly long opinion on Mouthshut, and lose it all

d) an e-mail reading 'click here within 10 seconds to win £10000'

You get the picture. Another annoying thing about AOL is that stupid irritating ginger haired woman 'Connie' (yes, she is the one on the adverts we've all dreamed about running over.) She pops up everywhere, and really does annoy you.

Advertisements always appear, and I don't like this because they take quite a long time to load, and you can't get rid of them until they are fully loaded. It's not as if the advertisements have anything good in them either, they are mostly 'user exclusive offers' that you can of course obtain from any high street store for less.

AOL say they are against SPAM e-mailing, you could have fooled me! Hardly a day goes by without me receiving an e-mail saying 'come to steamy Sarah's sex parlour' or 'hardcore Asians are ready for you' etc etc. I really could do without these, thank you very much AOL!

Another thing is, that when you sign on, two boxes come up, with the latest news (also packed full of adverts) and these are permanently on your screen, and cannot be closed, only minimised. These are rather unnecessary, as I don't use AOL to find out news.

AOL also have a couple of annoying tricks when you try and sign off, firstly, they give you the option to either 'stay on' 'sign off' or 'exit AOL'. These are all contained in a (you've guessed it!) box with adverts in! This is AOL's one last desperate attempt to bombard you with special offers and discounts. Also contained in his box are competitions you haven't got a snowballs chance in hell of winning, so I wouldn't bother even entering. I hear cry's of 'you have to be in it to win it' but to you people I say, 'Shutup' (kindly of course.) AOL then, regularly downloads 'updates' without your permission, which can take ages and there is no way of stopping this. This gets to me, as often I need to quickly shut down the computer and Internet and can't, because AOL is doing its own thing!

Anyway, that's enough about AOL's bad points, lets move on to some advantages.

AOL has a nice feature of a 'buddylist' that informs you of when your contacts, friends, family and workmates are online. This is quite useful, and allows you to 'Instant Message' them when you want to talk to them. 'Instant Messaging' is similar to MSN messenger, allowing you to have a conversation.

AOL's interface is pretty user friendly, and you can customise things on the task bar at the top of your screen to suit you. I haven't bothered doing this though, as I am fine with what is already there. AOL has a LOAD of chat rooms to choose from, although once again I never use this feature, as I find it quite boring!

I am quite for the idea of having 'keywords' to take you different parts of AOL. For example, keyword 'buddylist' will bring your, surprisingly enough 'buddylist' up!

AOL is very fast to load, unless it is updating itself (which it often does) which takes about a minute or so, and connection is relatively quick.

AOL customer service is pretty good for a large company, and the phone number is an 0800 free call number. This is useful, as if AOL goes wrong, you know you won't be charged 60p a minute for help (BT!!!!!!!!!)

I can't say I've used this often though, except to get a free upgrade (which comes out regularly.) The upgrades aren't bad, although by the time you get it through your door a newer version is out!

E-mail's are very simple to read and write, and you have a personal online filing cabinet to store them all in, with ample room. Pictures and attachments are easy to add, and I make use of this often. AOL also gives you the ability of having up to 8 account user names, enough for all the family! Each username has its own password, and you can customise your username to your needs, and not just the same as your master account holder. Parental guidance settings are easy to implement, and my younger brother has (much to his dislike) this used on him, preventing him from seeing what he shouldn't so to speak!

All in all, AOL isn't bad, for what your paying, and is somewhat recommended by myself.

Well, if I've missed anything off, let me know, and thanks for reading! Why not take advantage of AOL's 99 hour free trial? You've seen the advert!