Pardon the dramatic subject, but it got your attention, and you're reading this post, so ha..good on yer..mate.. I was in class and my teacher brought up AOL *the whole class boo'd and threw stuff* Anyway.. She was saying how AOL, once it's installed in your system, basically screws everything up, changes registry keys, file names, and other tech stuff. Is this true? I don't use AOL myself, except for their lovely free CDs which I use for is glass coasters. Anyone know anything else about this? I find it interesting. Yet another reason to hate AOL.
Yes, AOL is pretty invasive. My biggest complaint is the way AOL insinuates itself into the minds of its users. I have a friend on AOL and he has been with them for a few years. He doesn't even know how to surf the net with a browser. When I say something to him about my surfing around, where I go and what I do on the net, its is totally beyond his comprehension. He has somehow got this impression that the internet is AOL, and all else is worthless. He can't even understand how someone can get logged on without going thru AOL. Until I told him, he didn't even know there were ISPs in his area. He is not a stupid person, and it is sad.
I have not tried AOL 8.0, but, the previous versions, and most especially v5.0, were terrible when it came to changing networking settings and installing networking components on your system, even if AOL was not your connection method. If you like to tweak network parameters, you have to revisit all those settings following an AOL install.
[tt]Yes, AOL is pretty invasive. My biggest complaint is the way AOL insinuates itself into the minds of its users.[/tt] I always thought it would be cool if some hacker managed to do the following.. When AOL startups, instead of the audio file saying "Welcome, you've got mail" it would say "Welcome, you've been assimilated." or even "Welcome, you've been disconnected". lol. [tt]He doesn't even know how to surf the net with a browser. [/tt] I couldn't stand some "service" (like AOL) holding my hand when I go online, it's too over-bearing. They used AOL at my last job, it nearly drove me crazy. I kept wanting to close the AOL "browser". This is going to make me sound like a total geek..well I am..but that's beside the point. Last night I had a nightmare that I accidentally installed AOL on my computer. I awoke in a cold sweat.
There is here somewhere in TenForward a thread which shows what a trouble it can be when you choose (for whatever reason) to change from the AOL browser to another one and you want to keep for example your favourites.
Yes, that was for a few years a big problem, but, we recently discovered a way to convert AOL Favorite Places to IE Favorites or Netscape Bookmarks. (It was for Blaze's move off AOL... It happened while you were offline.) It took a few hours of hex editing the export file to find some corruption, but it does work. (Actually, it was kind of fun, too.) "HOW DO I SAVE FAVES" https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=6730
