Mini Rant IV — AOL

by Marko Peric

Every Sunday afternoon the weekly sales flyers appear in the mail box. Some Sundays I'm bored and I read them right away, some Sundays I ignore the flyers and never read them at all. But this isn't about flyers, although that's another good topic for another rant someday. This is about something that came with the flyers (at least I assume it did, it was in the mailbox when I got the flyers, and it's not like there's mail delivery on Sunday or Saturday), specifically an AOL disc. This one offers me 1000 hours FREE and New & Improved Canadian version 7.0 (7.0 not available on Windows 3.1, NT, or on Mac).

I resisted the urge to toss the bright yellow disc and its atrocious teal packaging into the trash posthaste, instead I took a moment to read the fine print (Okay, so this is one of those bored Sunday afternoons). Yes, they really are offering 1000 free hours of access. But here's the kicker, those 1000 hours have to be used up in 45 days. If you're like me and not able to calculate with 4 digit numbers in your head quickly and accurately, I did the math on my trusty Sharp scientific calculator from high school for you. There are 1080 hours in 45 days. Using 1000 hours in 45 days would require being online no less than 22 hours every day. I remember back in the day when I was using dial up Internet, before my provider came up with unlimited accounts, I believe I had around 120 hours of monthly access. I consider I'm on the net a lot, but I never once hit my hour limit. 120 hours monthly works out to about four hours per day, which is of course a far cry from 22 hours per day. I guess AOL is hoping their customers can't do the math.

I miss the old days when AOL used floppy disks to disseminate their wares to unsuspecting consumers. Pop the floppy in the drive, do a quick format a: and throw on a blank label and hey, instant free disc. But all these new AOL CD-ROMs are good for is big yellow Running Man® coasters, and I already have lots of coasters. They could at least use a real CD jewel case so that would be salvageable.

Remember my aforementioned urge to toss the disc into the trash? I just gave in to it. At least a bright yellow CD makes for colourful garbage.