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From: wjb@tantalum.eds.com (Bill Biesty)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Online services for the Mac (America On-Line)
Summary: summary was good
Keywords: America On-line AOL Mac Macintosh
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.000847.1015@edsr.eds.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 00:08:47 GMT
References: <0B010004.s4oi2a@outpost.UUCP> <91086.115716KPURCELL@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK> <10887@bunny.GTE.COM>
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Organization: EDS Research, Dallas, TX
Lines: 26

Chuck Hoffman's review of AOL corresponds to my impression of it.
I quickly got bored of the chat areas (good party dudes!) and now
regularly use it to find useful software.  Although the system tends
to get bogged down in the after work hours 6:00 PM to 12:00 AM.

Twice I have been disconnected from AOL while downloading software
during those hours due to the host not responding.  Once the AOL
mac app quick unexpectedly.  Now I do my downloads early on Sunday
morning with great results: downloads take HALF their expected times!
Example: ResEdit 2.1 was supposed to take 70 minutes, instead it
took 30.

On the user interface, it takes a while to get used to.  Ever get lost
in a hypercard stack?  It can be like that.  I once posted and the next 
week when I went to see if anyone responed, it took me 30 min to find 
it!  Unlike Usenet news AOL allows you to open a bulletin board 
at will.  And there's no way to search for new stuff across all boards
in an area without selecting them individually and doing a Find New.
(I've recently complained about this.)

I had a really great dialog between two other people going about 
watercoloring which we conducted by email since the above navigation
problems were too much to deal with.  But it broke up around the 
beginning of the year.

Bill