AOHell

I grow increasingly weary of AOL and I'd ditch it altogether if practically everyone I know didn't know me by my AOL email address.

How do I loathe AOL? Let me count the ways.

1. A couple of months ago it downloaded some kind of "update" that now causes two processes (both named "aolsoftware.exe") to run in the background. One typically ends up being about 120 meg in size (they get bigger the longer they're allowed to run) and soon enough they drag my computer to a literal halt. The other day it took my computer two and a half minutes to switch between AOL and Word for Windows! But if I kill these two stupid processes, my computer behaves normally.

2. AOL has the exceedingly annoying habit of snatching focus away from the dialog box you're working in and directing it elsewhere. You think you're typing a URL into the Explorer address bar, but suddenly the text is being directed to some other box, usually a "search AOL" box.

3. About every third day AOL simply refuses to connect and I have to reboot my computer. But thanks to all the twidget bullshit AOL, Adobe, Winzip and everyone else has gratuitously loaded onto my computer, I literally have to go get a cup of coffee while I wait for my PC to boot because the frustration of watching it sit there comatose for six minutes while it loads 27,000 system tray things would drive me to homicide.

4. AOL's version of Exploder won't cooperate with Blogger polls. Microsoft Explorer will. Thanks, AOL, thanks for the seamless implementation of your browser. Jesus.

5. Click on any AOL news story that links to "switched.com" (whatever the hell that is) and you're doomed to reboot. It locks up my AOL tighter than a drum, and it's fricking AOL doing it! I can kill AOL via the task manager and can sometimes reconnect, but the crash leaves my computer in such a disordered state it doesn't work right and rebooting is the only viable option.

6. In reference to #5 above, the downward pressure on the common denominator for AOL news stories must be incredible, almost as bad as the upward pressure on marketing in AOL news stories. "AOL news" is pretty much a joke - it's either a succession of links to stories about pinhead celebrities I don't care about, or links to pinhead lifestyle stories that are irrelevant to me, or a succession of links to on-line stores where I can (or am supposed to) buy stuff. And let's not forget that there's a problem with "switched.com" that thoroughly hoses my computer. I don't even screw with the "Welcome Screen" any more because it's a fricking oxymoron.

7. AOL has recently gotten into the habit of tacking on a bit of advertising to the bottoms of my emails! If I wanted to advertise in my emails, I would, but I really don't appreciate AOL's high-handed assumption that it can append anything it wants to my emails without my permission. I've actually had people email me and ask me to stop appending the advertising because it makes them uncomfortable from a security point of view, but is there a way to turn it off? Hell if I know! AOL's help feature is great if you like reading restatements of the crushingly obvious, but when it comes to arcane features, pfft. Fuggedaboudit.

And I'm paying for this!

Do you sense that I'm a bit frustrated with AOL? It goes in cycles. Every so often AOL pisses me off to the point that I'm ready to email everyone I know with a new gmail address, but so far every time I start to go through with it, I go get a cup of coffee or something and I calm down. But this new business with the enormous "aolsoftware.exe" resource-hogs is really getting to be too much. But what really set me off this time was finding out that the problem with my blog poll wasn't the poll, or the blog, but AOL.

Not that AOL is the only offender. Microsoft, Adobe and others get up to strange hijinks too, but AOL is by far the worst. It's considered such a joke where I work that I can't even work at home. Sharing files between one's work computer and one's home computer is acceptable to the IT gods, but only if the home computer doesn't have AOL installed on it. If it does, well, you're SOL; you aren't allowed to share files.

That's great. Mattie's proud. Not.