Now I hate AOL

Sorry if you are an AOL user, but if you are then please think of changing your provider. As a bit of “Disclosure,” I used to be an AOL user in the mid 1990s but, thankfully, I got over it.

My recent tirade is a combination of dislike for AOL and Packard Bell’s choice of software.

I have bought a new laptop (Packard Bell, MZ36 series) and it is brilliant. I really like it. However, today I foolishly tried to uninstall the AOL software which is doing nothing but popping up every now and then, running in the background and taking up disk space.

Doing the decent thing, I used the control panel “uninstall” applet. Possibly my big mistake. I started the uninstall process at 1655hours (BST) and as I write this it is 1815hours (BST). The process still has not completed. I refuse to believe that the AOL 9.5 software is so large that an Intel Core 2 Duo processor takes over 1 hour, 20 mins to remove it so I assume the thing has crashed. Being new to Vista, I have no real idea on how to stop it or how to kill the process without causing problems (I tried doing it in Task Manager but it didn’t die).

Worryingly there is a large collection of software I have no intention of ever using which Packard Bell have “Helpfully” installed for me. Do I have the courage to remove all of them?

[tags]Technology, Rant, AOL, Computers, Bad Service, BT, Vista[/tags]

3 thoughts on “Now I hate AOL

  1. Well where do I start. First off, I began building PCs since 1990 and have seen first hand what AOL does to a PC. It was always a big joke to receive the floppies all the time, because we (geeks) could reformat them. I hated it when they started sending the worthless CDs. Couldn’t reformat those.

    In our geekie world, if you had an AOL account, you were a computer illiterate user!

    AOL is the world’s biggest PC hacker of all time. Maybe Real Player is worse, I don’t know. AOL puts little files in every single corner of your registry completely taking over control.

    When I ordered my Dell (yes I ordered a desktop and a laptop once) instead of building it, I repeated over and over again, how I DID NOT WANT AOL on my PC. I think they still charged me for it anyway.

    Now with Vista. Well you are really headed for a hard time there. I think it is best to call Packard Bell, and tell them you have a right to receive it the way you want it…and you don’t want AOL anywhere near it. Those people at all the sales places always try to force the software bundle including AOL on people. Well most of that stuff is junk and people don’t want it.

    Vista already takes more resources, so why add on more stuff to take the rest. Then on top of that the Internet takes up even more resources. By the time you want to run anything your PC is running slower than an old 386.

    The only thing I actually liked was the messenger. I liked the little yellow guy. It was free and did not hack all over my PC.

    Now I have to tolerate Time Warner, since it is the only cable modem service where I live. God I miss Adelphia so bad!!! I cringed knowing AOL was going to be apart of Time Warner….and now another monopoly 🙁

    Laura Gullett
    http://www.myspace.com/skybits

  2. Laura, thanks for your comments and I agree with you whole heartedly.

    Vista has been the mixed bag of “pretty interface” and hellish use I suspected it would be (See here for an example).

    It is a shame that technology is sending us backwards in time …

  3. This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title Why Dont You Blog?. Thanks for informative article

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