aol

commercial online services:

get off

This message could be considred targeted at any online service user, but AOL pops up the most.
Commercial online services provide an important service. Through their relentless mailings and disk-a-aways, and their plug and play ease of use, many folks who wouldn't otherwise become active participants in cyberspace.
It is after someone has been introduced to the online world that the limitations of the commercial online services become clear.
If you are an commercial online service user (Prodigy, AOL), and you are browsing the web, it is time for you to ditch that shit and

get a real Internet account, it's faster, better and cheaper.

Choice of browsers, better e-mail management, cheaper rates. In San Francisco, you can get unlimited online hours for $16 a month.
You don't have to pay their BS hourly fees waiting for banal graphics heavy commercial promotions. You won't have to use proprietary crippleware to do cool Internet shit halfway.
Be a part of the world community at large, not a for-profit gated strip mall with corporate police.

TheList.com will help you find a straight-up Internet service provider. They've got lists of ISPs by area code, statewide imagemap, country, whatever. Many of the services have user comments appended, including a one to ten rating.

James Egelhof and Tom Finley each present deeply felt and deeply researched pages describing, in very specific detail, using examples, of why no one should support AOL. Somehow it has inspired their deep contempt.
I found a recent reason to dislike AOL when I read an interview with the President, Ted Leonsis.
When I worked at Wired, I was assigned caretaking their AOL space. I hated it. Clunky interface to make a shoddy looking product. Minutes at my mouse twitching while

NBC Sports graphics loading, please wait.

Some of the commercial online services are getting hip to this, getting out of the content and community business and offering PPP dialup, use of NetScape, becoming simply worldwide Internet Service Providers, like NetCom or the Well or Pipeline.

I still recommend you go with a local service provider. Support local business, aid in the fight against monopolies

and Signup at a place where you can be
joe, or christy, or fooznit @localplace.com
instead of
[email protected]
It's a sign of how they'll treat you on the phone too.
Sure with a local service provider, you risk not being able to get through to your favourite newsgroups when their server crashes.
If you belonged to Compuserve, you wouldn't be able to get through because they're banned in Germany!
The Internet is tempermental either way, you might as well make the friendly choice.