Another blow to AoHell

[calpha]

EDIT....ooops sorry wrong board....
Recently I built my grandmother a pretty quick pc for internet and word processing.

W2k Pro, Office 2k, and AoHell.

PC=
PIII 866
256Megs Ram
20Gig HD
On board Network Card
Motorola SM56 Modem Riser (AMR modem)

I ran the PC for a month non-stop doing the following:
Prime95 for two weeks

Endless loop of Passmark Burn-in-Test.

Custom Written App to just Ul/DL files via http/ftp to test internet. Stupid me used earthlink as the ISP on this test.

Give my grandma the rock solid PC and forgot that she only KNOWS AOL. She's old, and she's used AOL for three years, and that took a miracle to teach her that, but I'm proud of her b/c she took the time to learn it.....but she wouldn't use the comptuer w/o aol on it.

Dl'd AOL, and installed it, and it worked fine while I was there.

Later on....about 2 days later, I started gettin gemails from her complaining that the PC would intermittintly shut off, and sometimes it would reboot. Other times it would just log off of AOL, and not b e able to dial back up.

Went and tested it again at her house and it worked fine.....did a couple of stress tests, and tested the modem. everything was fine on the PC, and the modem worked perfect. I even tested a dial-up recieve using pc-anywhere from home, and it worked.

Later that week, smae email. PC is either rebooting, or locking up. Sometimes can't dial in to AOL.

Did a search on the internet with AOL and each piece of hardware.....starting with teh grx card down to see if any people were reporting problems. Turns out....there were "issues" with AOL and the AMR modems. I know the AMR modems are generally suck---but this one worked fine for what it needed to do.....and I had one that was a spare.....

So I cursed, and went and bought a cheap 56K PCI Modem (WinModem---argh)....installed it....and removed the AMR modem. That was 8 months ago, and not one email about the PC Locking up, or having any problems.

I really do hate AOL.

And this is my last computer for a relative. AFter that one, I'm referring everyone to DELL.

 

[drag]

Hey, don't let aol screw you over from helping grandma.

Anyways dells are gonna begin sucking, so your family be better gettting them from you.

Hey, look at it this way, All geeks know the AOL/Tmewarner thing was cursed from the start. They will probably still be around, but only a moron would ever go from AOL dialup to AOL dsl. But maybe they with AOL DSL they would be getting close to the 56k they've been promised from the start! How much is AOL, nowadays? She could get it much cheaper from a local company.

 

[calpha]

I just read Michael Dell's book......

I'd like to read it again now....b/c you're not the only person I've heard say that dell's are beginning to suck.

personally, I don't see how quality can be built into a product w/ a cost of $299. yah, $20 million a day in web sales HELPS A LOT.....but still.
Their components are cheap.

Plus, Dell has it's own BIOSes (not bad) and own proprietary hardware (like PSes) very bad....and if you replace a burned out PSupply not knowing that it may be proprietary.....c'ya.

BTW. Grannie piggie backs on someone else's account.

i've given up beggin in my fmaily.

My dad has 7 brothers and sisters. ALL of them....I repeat ALL of them.....use AOHell. I've begged them to change, and none of them will....too much to ask. I've showed them how they can save money going elsewhere....they don't care. .....so I gave up.

 

[Rufio]

thats a losing cause...AOL is for the masses who think that u can only get online thru AOL.

 

[tigerwannabe]

i'm not too surprised at your trials with aol--had similar trouble supporting some folks who use aol. far as i know, aol has always made pc's act screwy. i think Rufio said it right.