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The Sinking Ship that is AOL
EyesWideOpen writes "This article at Salon discusses the ways in which AOL is trying to stay afloat, with the release of version 8.0 of it's software, in a time when AOL (which recently merged with Time Warner) has had a string of bad press -- falling stock prices, SEC investigation, etc. -- attached to it's name. One of my favorite quotes from the article says of AOL: ''It was never really an Internet company. AOL was based on the idea that people needed to live in a halfway house while they became accustomed to the Net.'...If folks can get a better, faster, cheaper online experience by ditching AOL, they'll do it in a heartbeat.'"
Go with iPass if you can. They contract with a bunch of different ISPs around the world.
When you call, your "call experience" is logged and reported for billing but also for quality control. If the number you dialed was busy or poor quality, the number will drop down the list of numbers for that city for everybody using the dialer. Thus, the ISP has incentive to keep the lines high-quality (since they don't get paid if you don't use their lines) and you get the best known number wherever you travel.
Additionally, in a corporate setting, it uses radius for authentication. We use Steel-belted RADIUS to authenticate it against our Win2K domain, but you could use a built in tool.
No, I don't make money from them. In fact I pay money to them, but I'm actually satisfied with this one vendor.the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
half of the web?
I don't know where you surf, buddy, but I am using mozilla every day and maybe 1% of the sites doesn't work.
Yes, but for the mephistophelian price of installing AOL 6 (or 7 or 8 or whatever) and letting it take over all of your network connections.
The "most access numbers" statistic is sort of a chimera; you really only need 1 or 2 per metro area, it's the *traffic* on those numbers that's important. That said, I've had excellent experience dialing up to EarthLink in almost every (US) location I've ever been to, and I can almost always get a line by the 2nd call, while my brother across the room tries to dial the local AOL number for half an hour.
Also, as a plus over some of the "local + roaming" others are mentioning in this thread, I don't think EarthLink costs more depending on where you are. I've used a corporate account at several locations and had no complaints from the accounting department about charges.
I'm not a salesperson for EarthLink, but it just seems way preferable to AOL even if they technically have "more" dial up numbers.
Indeed.
:-)
When a customer switches from AOL to us, it's never because of our prices, (which are low, compared to the other services available in the area), but because they got fed up with AOL's customer service.
Usually, they'd been with them for years, but when they started having problems, they'd discover AOL's customer service doesn't do much more than give away additional months of service as retainers.
We've never, ever had someone switch to us from AOL because they wanted more powerful access.
We affectionately call them "AOL refugees."
What's this Submit thingy do?