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Sree's Thoughts on AOL 8.0
 Thursday, Oct 17, 2002

On Tuesday, Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall turned into AOL-land, much to the amusement of the regular ushers there who watched pop stars, Dana Carvey and AOL executives take over the venerable venue. On the streets, several roller-bladers, dressed like the purple butterflies of the MSN logo, carried around signs for the Microsoft service. Not your typical Tuesday in Manhattan. But then we are in the middle of a major battle between AOL and MSN for the hearts and minds of those Americans who use the two services to go online.

On Tuesday, AOL launched its version 8 and on Oct. 24, MSN launches its version 8. The end result of all this competition should be an improved experience for the customer. I will be reviewing MSN's update soon, but in the meantime, here's my take on AOL 8.

Overall, the product is a significant improvement on previous versions of AOL, addressing several items that many long-time customers have taken issue with. The company says it has made more than 100 changes, but I will talk here only about six.

  • E-MAIL: AOL's e-mail system has long been the laggard of the major Inernet service providers. With version 8, it takes significant leaps to the top of the game. Version 7 already allowed you to sort e-mail by sender, date, subject, but this version has a nice way of dealing with the bane of AOL users, spam. All e-mail can be sorted by "People I know," "Bulk senders," "Unknown senders," and "Everyone." This automatically reduces the hassles of wading through dozens of junk messages. The "People I know" features lists everyone in your e-mail addressbook and instant messenger "buddy list," and if you wish, everyone you send e-mail to. If only they could find a way to stop the actual junk mail from showing up in the first place.
  • AUTO REPLY: Now, at last, the AOL allows you to set a "vacation" message when you are away from you computer.
  • AUTO RECONNECT: This is a useful feature. Normally, if you lose your connection to AOL (say, if someone picks up your phone extension), you get kicked offline and go back to the login screen. Now, you get reconnected automatically, and if you were on a Web page filling in information, the page is still available to you.
  • CALL ALERT: The bulk of AOL users are still on a single-phone dial-up line and this feature provides an alert when a call comes in. The caller then gets a pre-recorded reply telling him or her you are online. This has an additional fee of $3.95 a month (plus any charges your phone company may add on).
  • PARENTAL CONTROLS: The improved parental controls include a way for parents to get a report on what activities their children used when going online. Be sure to discuss this with your children before you use it.
  • REDUCED POP-UP ADS: AOL's internal pop-ups are even more irritating than the ones you get on the Web, and now the company has committed to stop displaying any more new ones. Once the current ad contracts run out, the only pop-ups you will see are ads for AOL services themselves or for products from the vast AOL Time Warner empire (still too many for my taste, but a big step nevertheless).

The bottomline on this version: The eighth time's a charm. For committed AOL users, it's definitely worth getting. For those considering getting AOL, I would try the free trial you can get at AOL.com and test it out. Those who won't use most AOL's community features and e-mail system, this may not be worth switching from your current ISP (especially if it's cheaper). It really depends on how you go online and what you do there.

Coming soon: a review of MSN 8.

Resources:
AOL.com or AOL keyword "8.0"
MSN.com

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