Good morning dear Esteemed, wise, ravaged-by-AOL, Safaried, and pecs-of-man-meat BK --
I personally happen to think that AOL is a very large, very bloated, and by now very unneeded corporation...... and one of the most intrusive and troublesome of all of the ISPs around. It started out when a lot of people were very intimidated by the "nuts & bolts" of navigating around the web, or opening an email.
I actually have a good friend in Pasadena, who was amazed at how I could log on at his house, check my personal email from his computer (using a "webmail" feature that Cox.net has), and surf the web just by opening Internet Explorer.... All of which don't cost me anything above just my basic Cox cable service. He actually thought that he couldn't access the web without going through his "AOL entry point."