| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| mochyn |
Alternative to AOL?I'm fed up with AOL. Can anyone recommend a good alternative? Bearing in mind that I'm a techno-idiot, of course
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| tahir |
BT?
AOL is a complete waste of space, anybody else will be better and there's enough people here to get you up to speed with an alternative if you have probs |
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| twoscoops |
What's wrong with AOL? | ||||
| mrutty |
http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ gives you a netural benchmark. I'd always go Pipex or BT if you have a business account. Great service and Pipex and BT have worked together for years. Normally find line faults raised by Pipex are addressed in a few hours not the 3 day SLA they have with all service providers. | ||||
| mochyn |
It seems expensive (but then I have nothing to compare it to); don't think I like the whole AOL/TimeWarner thing; there are often problems with needing to do things differently on AOL; tons of advertising: need I go on?!
I'll have a look at BT, Tahir, Ta. |
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| tahir |
They have their own browser thingy which is picky and choosy about what it's going to work with and how, you can get round this by using a browser as well as AOL but that sort of defeats the object. |
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| mrutty |
It's over priced shitte that is packaged to have minimal impact on their infrastructure. Designed to hide all useful components from the user and hide the true nature of the 'Net'. Not interested in the great interests of the 'Net' and fails to follow RFCs until forced by overwheming pressure from it's users. Pauses for breath..... but otherwise fine 
my mother uses AOL and it takes most of my life fixing their upgrades 
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| tahir |
That's one way of putting it.
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| twoscoops |
Righto. | ||||
| jema |
My FIL went AOL originally, I recall popping round to help him, and finding myself at a loss, because in the AOL package all the standard bits from the internet were renamed or otherise f*&*ed with, as AOL decided it had the right to impose its own totally non standard infrastructure. I know this is unfair on people who have no reason to know any better when they choose AOL but AOL has always been known as "assholes on line" by techies. jema |
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| dougal |
For anyone used to 'proper' net access AOL is a pain. Quite a lot of things are done differently, or simply seem not to work.
BUT - I had understood that AOL was quite highly regarded for their family-friendly nannying censorship, and accordingly might be a good recommendation for kids... I'm not an advocate of relying on on-line support for internet access problems (think about it!) |
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| tahir |
And then there's the issue of the billions of AOL Cd's filling up landfill worldwide 
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| mrutty |
Yes they do help to stop kiddie surfing, but download Opera or the like and you can I'm told bypass it. It really only uses the MS plugin service. If you want real kiddies safe NetNanny or SurfControl are the very best and issue updates daily. |
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| judyofthewoods |
I took a free trial with AOL when I first went onto the net 4 years ago, and did not like it, and when trying to cancel, I had a real difficult time getting through to them on the phone (the only way I could cancel), spending hours listening to menus and musac grrr, and then some real hard sales pap, allmost threats of suicide from the op if I didn't renew.....I'd run a mile from AOL, quite apart from all the other issues mentioned above.
I have tiscali, which is quite reasonable in price and quite reliable. I use a blank browser (MS IE), and pick my search engine from the favorites when needed, much quicker to load. Pitty though, that crappy MS has cornered the market, would rather not support them, but am not techy enough to go for alternatives . |
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| tahir |
You don't have to be techy both Opera and firefox are very easy to set up and free (although the free version of opera displays ads). |
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| jema |
Only thing i really dislike about Firefox is that I have no spotted how to make it fail with an error message when there is a JavaScript bug. This makes it a bit of a pain when developing JavaScript. jema |
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| mochyn |
Totally lost me there, Judy! If you're not techy enough, I'm still pre-stone age! I've opened quite a can of worms, haven't I? I'm more confused thanever now! No idea what to go for! |
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| tahir |
Don't worry, just sign up with BT and once you're up and running with that we'll get you onto a different browser. | ||||
| sean |
My only problem with firefox is that Mandy keeps customising it when I'm not looking. 
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| mochyn |
Tahir, you're a star. Meanwhile, I shall console myself with this peice of Chocolate Chestnut Truffle Cake 
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| mochyn |
Just been on the BT ineternet site and, ironically, I can't get access to the relevant page! Never mind, I've asked them to send the info. to me. Fingers crossed. |