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This menu is not graphical? Hell it's even animated!
http://www.qlinklives.org/

You seem to have a lot of hatred for AOL, but I remember when it was called Quantum Link (see link) and offered in the mid-80s a web type interface before the web existed. It also provided the earliest Online Sims games (called Club Caribe). And although I preferred to use FIDOnet and Usenet, AOL did have decent forums for asking questions. Those posts were answered by a national audience, which was a huge step-up from the local BBSes.

My memories of AOL are generally positive, and I still use them today. $7/month is a hard-to-beat deal for net access.

http://www.qlinklives.org/

Nice photos! I like how those old magazines used direct camera shots of televisions. There was no such thing as a "screen dump" back then. Here's me in 1989: http://www.qlinklives.org/qlink-old/me1989.jpg * And here's the 1985-Commodore 64 version of "Miis" - http://www.fudco.com/chip/habitat.gif - I don't know what this is but it looks cool - http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/1991/c64_11.jpg

Those were the good old days, when computing was an adventure into unknown territories & unrealized possibilities. Nowadays it's more like a boring appliance (IMHO).

*

* (just joking; I looked more like Weesley Crusher on TNG - just a teenager.)

Brilliant! But I bet most Slashdotters don't realize that Quantum Link was the precursor to AOL as we know it today..

Quantum links have been around since the 80s.

http://www.qlinklives.org/

This doesn't make much sense to me. Doesn't the Time Warner half want to push hi-bandwidth content through to its AOL subscribers? It's much more difficult to do this via 56k. I really don't know much about the merger other than it's not doing so well. But it seems like the two sides aren't really talking.

On the contrary, I think that with the merger AOL Broadband is in some ways redundant. Without entering into the discussion of whether online services themselves are unnecessary/dying, I'd like to point out that Quantum Link, AOL's predecessor, lasted for a very long time with a very small customer base, but was eventually phased out when AOL's next-generation service was firmly entrenched.

Considering some of AOL-TW's related holdings, I believe the next incarnation will be commercial Internet service with special "premium" content coming from web portals, and more content control via bundled adware and the like.

As a former QuantumLink user ('Jaeger', if anyone cares), I still feel some amount of bitterness in my gut about how America On-Line let the Q's database go to hell over time. Monopolistic actions? Hell, that's only the latest reason to despise Steve Case.