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Just spent a significant amount of time constructing a what I thought was a well thought out response to another thread when the clock struck midnight and AOL decided to sign me off as it does at 00.00 every night.
Can't use it to access BBC iPlayer as it thinks I am in another country
Time I think to flex my consumer or open another
Any recommendations? We use Tiscali at the shop or should I go for Sky with its free add-ons?
In my experience, neither Tiscali or Sky have the will to solve problems. Trying to get issues resolved can be an extremely frustrating exercise, a situation that probably will not improve until customers have the ability to change ISP's at will.
I had AOL once and I know exactly what you mean. I found the problem was that they try and bumble in too much 'bonus' software which vitualy uses all the PC resources. I didn't want wheather reports, sports news or special offers - just a reliable connection. And it wasn't cheap. I was running win98 at the time on a 1200mhz cpu with 512 ram. Running their browser mean I could not open any other program. Not even e-mail. That can't be right. The only 'help' I got was a brillaint suggestion that I get a new PC. Eventually it stopped working altogether. I switched to Orange and not had any problems since.
Everyone I have spoken to on the subject seems to hold the same opinion.
I have only just moved the shop broadband from Tiscali to Talk Talk.
Tiscali was OK but when I did have a problem (the broadband stopped working) I felt like I was being told just enough by the ‘Non UK based’ call Center to keep me happy and it took 2 weeks to put it right and lots of 0870 calls at national rate.
Talk Talk has been great so far.
UK based call centers. Free 0800 help line / customer services. And its only £30 inc the VAT a month for the broadband, phone line rental and all 01 and 02 phone calls between 9am and 5pm.
And also if a customer rings me who is with Talk Talk then the call is also free for them.
AOL has been sucking for as long as I can remember. In this neck of the woods a lot (including me) of people use Tiscali and I hear very few complaints. Of course it is only when things go wrong that you get the true measure of the help desk efficiency. Spending a large part of my life in the West Midlands helps me understand some of the local dialect spoken in the call centre... I have to say that everything does get sorted but normally when the questions on the tick sheet have all been answered and you are transferred to someone who knows what they are talking about.
Personally I would move away from AOL asap. Also go with a provider that operates on a monthly basis rather than being tied up for a year.
I'm an AOL user and I do get signed off from time to time - thought it was my PC (which also has a habit of re-starting itself for no apparent reason!)
Biggest problem I get is the right hand light on my router goes red or off altogether, which means I have no connection, I ring up the help desk and either they reconfigure me or the problem is that they have gone down, in which case there will be an automated message.
I dumped AOL several years ago when it became so bloated that I couldn’t get out of it easily to go on the real web. They kept trying to keep me on their site and wade though those ridiculous internal forums.
I switched to “earthlink.net”. It is only ~ $20/ month. To find a cheap, reliable service anywhere on the globe, do a little research on The List, and you should find something that suits your needs.
You can probably find an ISP for around £3.00 /month, I would guess.
Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent! – Porky Pine
If you decide to dump AOL - and personally i would - it's probably worth totally reformatting your hard drive afterwards to get rid of the traces of the A-HOLE software. I used A-HOLE years ago(back in the dial-up days) and when i switched to another provider my PC was cranky as hell until a tekky friend cleaned up all the bulls**t they left on my hard drive.
AOL is a lot like McDonald's - ubiquitous but made mainly from cow-brains
The best security for your computer is Avast anti-virus and use with Zone Alarm firewall.
And they are both free.
You can also use Microsoft’s Windows Defender as well, a real time spy ware blocker, again free.
Then you can also use Spybot Search & Destroy and/or Ad-Aware to scan for and remove spy ware.
Don’t ever pay for PC security as it’s no better or quite often worse then the free stuff.
My technology guru agrees that Norton is the work of Satan, and took about 2 hours removing all trace from my slightly decrepit Toshiba. He recommends AVG, which is available for free, but you have to put up with it asking you to upgrade to the subscription version. What extras you get by paying to upgrade from what is regarded as a reliable system, i have no clue, having failed thus far to part with the cash.
BTW the guy i share a studio with managed to get suckered by a virus which claims to be anti-virus software, so if you get an error message which directs you to update an anti-virus package you've never heard of, terminate it with extreme prejudice
Norton works well for me the anti-spam add on is great. AOL I think should be classed as a virus for the way it takes over a pc and is almost impossible to remove
prospero wrote:I use AVG anti-virus, which is free. But if you pay a small yearly subscription you get automatic updates.
Mine updates automatically even though it's the free version.
Also, like all anti-virus packages I've come across, it shows off about what a good boy its been every time you turn the thing on. If only it had a head i could pat it like a good little doggy
One thing I did like on AOL (when it was being cooperative) was the ability to send text messages to mobiles.
But I found out that you can do it on Orange from their website.
as it does at 00.00 every night.
or open another 
I found the problem was that they try and bumble in too much 'bonus' software which vitualy uses all the PC resources. I didn't want wheather reports, sports news or special offers - just a reliable connection. And it wasn't cheap. I was running win98 at the time on a 1200mhz cpu with 512 ram. Running their browser mean I could not open any other program. Not even e-mail. That can't be right. The only 'help' I got was a brillaint suggestion that I get a new PC. Eventually it stopped working altogether. I switched to Orange and not had any problems since. 
