On the road with AOL

Let’s forget for a moment that America Online is the world’s dominant Internet service provider. Let’s also ignore the fact that it owns an empire of film studios, television networks and magazines. Instead, let’s try to answer just one question: Should you take AOL on the road with you?

I won’t make you wait until the end of this column to find out. The answer is: no – and yes.

Travelers like Andy Newman, a public relations consultant in Miami, wouldn’t go anywhere without AOL loaded onto their laptop computers. “I have yet to travel to a country that I could not easily connect in,” he says. “Most of the time, it’s a local phone call.”

Newman is partial to AOL because of its user-friendliness and he says it’s well worth the $23.95 per month subscription fee (that’s considerably less than he’d have to pay using iPass or one of its resellers, which I wrote about last week). It’s also far cheaper than making international long-distance calls. Newman is happy to put up with the occasional disconnections and corrupted photos that upload when he’s using the network.

Wilfred Kelly, a retiree who spends his time between Jacksonville, FL, and Anchorage, AK, also likes AOL. “I’ve traveled extensively within the United States and Canada and have found AOL to be very easily accessible,” he says. Kelly grumbles about the cost, but he’ll gladly shell out the extra money to have something that’s reliable on the road.

Not all travelers share his sentiments.

“I think AOL is way overrated and a giant pain in the drain,” says Tucson, AZ, executive Jim Burke. His biggest complaint: AOL charges far too much for a service that should be cheap or even free. He believes the company is capitalizing on its user-friendliness – trapping users on a closed system that discourages people from becoming more informed Internet citizens.

He’s right about that. If you want to do anything more than check e-mail and maybe browse the Web for a few minutes, you’ll find that AOL is a virtual prison of sorts. Almost everything on AOL is as easy as point-and-click. All you need to remember are a few keywords and your password (and even that can be stored on your PC). You never have to worry about doing any heavy lifting, like configuring your e-mail program with your Internet service provider, or having to learn basic UNIX commands.

In other words, you don’t realize it’s a prison until you try to escape.

Scott Hancock, a consultant based in Tokyo, has been incarcerated in that jail one time too often, and he doesn’t like it. He complains that AOL often changes the settings on his laptop’s dialer without first asking for permission. The service also makes it difficult to check e-mail if it isn’t through a native AOL account using the Internet’s TCP/IP standard. It’s an electronic siren song that pulls you back into the AOL fold every time you leave.

“Any way you slice it, AOL is a bummer. Another example of marketing triumphing over real value,” he says.

Internationally, travelers such as Brooks Hurd find that AOL’s bandwidth is far too limited to conduct any meaningful electronic business. “AOL downloads enormous quantities of graphics after logging on, and each of these graphics takes bandwidth. When a large number of users are logged on to AOL in any one overseas location, these graphics slow AOL to a crawl,” says the Ezer, Israel-based traveler.

So should you take AOL on your next trip? If you want something that’s very easy to use, moderately priced, and that offers a respectable selection of dial-up numbers, then the answer is “yes.” But if you’re concerned about connection speeds or want to do more than just check your e-mail, you might want to consider leaving AOL at home in favor of an iPass service or even AT&T Global Net.

Because easy isn’t necessarily better.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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