In 1994, the World Wide Web began to expand greatly. AOL, or America Online, was the first company to offer the Internet to the public. At the time, it was obviously the best option for Internet service, considering the simplicity it provided as compared to before, when people needed basic programming skills to even log onto the Internet. But nine years later, things have changed. There are now more useful ways to connect to the Internet. AOL is outdated. AOL sucks for many reasons, and I’ll be giving you all of the reasons that I can think of, though there are more.

Back in 1994, it was helpful that AOL simplified the Internet. Today, most people are intelligent enough to be able to use the Internet without using the training wheels of AOL, believe it or not. Most people who like AOL have never used another ISP (Internet Service Provider) in their life. The Internet is not complicated for most purposes, and most people will be able to figure out how to use it without having to deal with the many problems of AOL.

The first and most obvious problem is the price. AOL’s dial-up service is approximately $24 a month, as compared to ISP’s such as Juno that cost approximately $15 a month. And what good comes out of paying that extra nine dollars a month? Nothing. In fact, paying the extra nine dollars for AOL actually puts you at a disadvantage. And soon, if you don’t already know, you will find out why.

When you want to get online, you’ll find that an AOL user MUST connect through the AOL window. There is no other way for an AOL user. They will have to go through several screens before they can finally connect. When they get on, they will be barraged with advertisements for AOL products. You’d think that $23.90 was enough already! It is slow enough connecting with AOL without having to deal with ads.

If you actually try to surf with AOL, it is known that AOL has blocked many sites that they consider offensive. To me, the Internet is about freedom. Personally, I wouldn’t want to use an ISP that tells me what I can and can’t do on the Internet. And the only one like that is AOL. That alone should be enough to convince anyone to get rid of AOL, but yes, there’s more. Plenty more. How’s this? It is extremely common to see an AOL user get kicked offline. Obviously, it happens to all dial-up users no matter what the ISP is, but it is much more frequent on AOL.

Another important part of the Internet is email. Every AOL user receives his or her own email address: yaay, right AOL users? Wrong. There are plenty of free email programs out there such as Hotmail. And it is known that AOL users have difficulty handling attachments in email. This could be either bad mail service by AOL or incompetence by AOL users. I’d say it’s a combination of both. AOL users have training wheels on the Internet. Eventually, these wheels, just like in the real world on a bicycle, make it more difficult to ride the bicycle. AOL oversimplifies things, and it makes their users clueless. Most online universities highly recommend that their students do not use AOL, since they will have to handle email attachments frequently.

Also, aren't we all just a bit tired of those damn AOL CD's? The CD's that we all get in the mail are annoying as hell. They're everywhere; most stores have them. The only good thing about AOL CD's is that you can steal them from Blockbuster or something and go and smash them against a wall. It's fun. I guarantee it.

Now that you’ve seen all this, if you are a competent person and an AOL user, something should click in your brain. It probably is along the lines of “get rid of AOL.” But wait! You’re going to have a hella bad time getting rid of AOL. First of all, AOL has been known to crash people’s computers when they attempt to uninstall it. Why is this? In what is probably the worst part about AOL, AOL places spyware on your computer when you install it. Yes, spyware. If you are an AOL user, you probably don’t know what spyware is. Spyware is software that monitors what you do on your computer and contributes to those damn pop-up ads that everyone gets. AOL’s spyware just happens to mess up your computer should you choose to uninstall AOL. And if you try to call to cancel AOL, I have heard that you will receive a difficult time in doing it. Supposedly, you are flooded with talk about how AOL will help you in some way that it won’t. There have also been problems with canceled subscriptions that AOL just chooses not to cancel and continues billing you for, even though you have said that you wish to get rid of AOL. Sounds like pretty user-friendly service…

Overall, it is much smarter to use a different, more effective ISP such as Juno. AIM, or AOL Instant Messenger, can be used for instant messaging. It is actually more powerful than the AOL messenger anyway, and can be used to direct connect with a friend, which is a very useful feature for swapping files. Overall, AOL is only useful to the truly technologically illiterate. But even those people should consider stepping it up a notch to the true Internet, instead of wasting their time with the expense, hassle, and general malaise of AOL.