h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Actually, I don't NEED it, I mean, I will survive without but...

I saw you mention - in the UK ISP flatrate thread - that it is possible to:

a) get rid of the irritating AOL welcome woman
b) not use their browser (I'm assuming that I then get "more screen inches" for my enjoyment?)

and

c) got any other AOL tips?

I hate it, but I stick there because I like my e-mail address, I like to use the personal site pages to store images and well, my mum has it and she uses me as her helpline!!

So if you could spare a few seconds to tell me, I'd be embarassingly and grovellingly thankful!

No problem! The irritating woman is contained within 3 .wav files- welcome.wav, gotmail.wav and goodbye.wav. Using My Computer or Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\windows\aolshare\sounds\uk\default - you'll find the guilty files there. I didn't delete them - just in case I wanted them back - I just renamed them. Copy three sound files you can live with into the directory and rename them welcome.wav, gotmail.wav and goodbye.wav and you've cracked it.

If this is more techy then you normally get, let me know and I'll explain in more detail.

As far as the browser is concerned, you need to launch it as normal to get online, but you don't then need to actually use it. Once you're online, you can launch Internet Exporer or Netscape and browse with that as normal. Whether that gets you more screen inches depends on how you have them configured - but all the other browsers I have used have the ability to display 'full screen' - which the AOL one doesn't.

Also, I hate the way it opens everything in little windows, I hate the bookmarking menu, I hate the way it forgets where you have been if it crashes, no matter what you do with the history settings - well you've used it - it's just not very nice.

I personally use Opera as a browser - if you're interested their website is called what you'd expect it to be called. It's a free download - I find it versatile and fast.

Unfortunately, there's no way of using AOL email without using their browser - you can't use it with Outlook or anything else.

There's nothing else I can think of off-hand, but if you think of anything and I know the answer I'd be glad to help - grovelling not required!

Thank you, that's great.
I have the German version of AOL and I don't like the woman's voice. I'm ok with the renaming of the files. Maybe I'll put my disgusting noises in there (ex apple owner)

I didn't realise that I could run IE or something... I'm a dork like that though. It's just that with something (like h2g2) with frames, it cuts of loads of screen space, and I only have 600x800 anyway.

I don't mind the mail thing, although if you can tell me how to file mails that I send somewhere in my AOL things I'd be very very grateful.

You might find that the files are in something like c:\windows\aolshare\sounds\de\default then (sorry if I'm stating the obvious). I can assure you that the woman is bloody irritating in English! Do you have those AOL TV ads in Germany - she wears a dress which has AOL screen dumps shimmering all over it. She's called Connie, apparently. She gets right up my nose!

As far as your email is concerned, if you click on the 'Email' menu in AOL (not the 'read' or 'write' ones - the one above them) you'll see an item called 'Personal Filing Cabinet'. This is where you can file any emails you want to keep - it has options to create folders etc. One of the existing folders will be 'emails you've sent'. It seems to keep everything you don't actually delete - needs a lot of housekeeping.

Thanks for the info... I'll have a rummage round.

I have to say I'm not a big fan of AOL 6.0. Very difficult to work out what everything does. Sitll haven't, in fact.

I don't watch German tv, since I got Sky (woo hoo!) so I'm familiar with Connie. My girls think she's the woman who lives inside my computer. I'm interested though. My mum has AOL 4 (I think) and she has Joanna Lumley telling her that I've written yet another christmas present suggestion list. That wouldn't be too irritating.

At least you have the benefit of a fixed rate though... an alien concept here in Germany

The fixed rate is about the only reason to use AOL! I use it because Freeserve and BT wouldn't let my firm use theirs as they are not for corporate use apparently.

So I sign on to AOL from home also. Which is nice because it means I get free internet access.

On the other hand, its a very unreliable service in my opinion. I quite often struggle to get on and it kicks me off frequently for no apparent reason. Also, the employees of the tech chat, at least all the ones I have spoken to, have been useless!

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

On the email front, when I first started using AOL as my ISP I used outlook to access my orange pop3 email acount and the firms emails. I could receive and send email no problemo. After a while though, it became increasingly difficult to send mail. I started to get an SMTP relaying error. This became more common so I eventually gave up and used web based mail instead. When I spoke to the tech chat people about it they said I can't have been sending or receiving mail from outlook as AOL doesn't support it and nver has! I still receive the firms email on the back on AOL into outlook so go figure american online!!

Rant over!

I've only had problems very very rarely. I was kicked off on Sunday for the first time in about 6 years. Back in February I moved house and got an ISDN line. I had real problems accessing AOL, but their techie help was really good, and gave me an alternate access number and since then it's been great.

I'm peeved that they only offer a flat rate to DSL customers... but the fact that we live in a village and don't have things like buses and DSL is a fact of life. But I'm very happy with my e-mail address, which is one reason to stay, it's very easy, and having 7 others (or is it 6 others?) is also nice. And the little webpages to store images is great for us, since we live a long way from our families.

Captain

I've been using IE now, and it's fabbo!!! thank you!

Ah! Interesting. I use ISDN on my work connection so maybe I should try for a different access number also. I've been put off talking to the tech chat people though!!

I heard that in UK it's really really difficult to get to talk to someone, they prefer you to use those ridiculous message board forum thingys. The only time I ever used one it's been a disaster, when I finally found them - the only reply I got was to say that I'd posted in the wrong place and it had been moved.

In Germany they just gave us the option of using a 64k connection, regardless of what modem we have, which seems odd to me. But anyway, right now it's working quite well.

Biggest AOL gripe? That it doesn't automatically save sent messages. That really gets my goat. Especially since if I e-mail a list of questions to my mum (oh, she lurks here, so HI MUM!) she tends to answer like this:

1. yes
2. ask your father
3. certainly not
4. yes
5. I told you that last week

etc

Erm - yes it does, Sho. Click on 'Read' in your email menu, and you'll see 3 tabs at the top of the window which opens - new email, old email and sent email. Click on 'sent' and there they all are.

Alternatively, click on the thin blue dropdown menu marked 'email' = directly above 'read' and 'write', and below the file and edit and window menus. You might have to scroll down a long way if you haven't done any housekeeping, but you should eventually reach a folder called 'email you've sent'.

That should hopefully make life easier for you and your mum (HI SHO'S MUM! )

Unless you have some obscure setting different from mine - I'll have a look.

I gave up ages ago on the tech chat forums (fora?) but the actual phone helpline isn't bad at all - you have to wait a while to speak to anybody, but that's ok because it's a free call (in England).

I usually find that the first person I speak to knows less about the problem than I do, but if you perservere they escalate the problem to a proper techie who knows enough to actually help.

I'd love to know how you manage to get Outlook working on AOL, threesecond - that's supposed to be impossible! What settings do you use in the Outlook account?

I need to make this clear from the start. I was not using an AOL mail account. I was using my [email protected] address and the work email which is based on a Manchester server.

You basically set up your outlook POP3 and SMTP settings the same as any other mail account but you use AOL as your ISP.

It used to be that you could send and receive mail on the back of AOL but now you can only receive. (although according to AOL that has always been 100% impossible)

Why haven't AOL set things up so you can use AOLmail in Outlook??

Ah, now I followed your advice about the sent mail, but it only stores something like the last 20 - 30, so the essay I wrote about my cat and sent to someone has vanished... not to worry. It is possible to access them, and then save them manually (as far as I can work out) but that's all online time... well, time full stop. Which is at a premium for me, as it is for most people.

I'd be interested to use Outlook while being on AOL, because if I want to use IE, and then contact someone by mail on a clickable link, the outlook program kicks in, but I want to use my normal e-mail account.

Ah the trials and tribulations of the modern world. (not least of which is having a Mum who can see all your h2g2 conversations!! HI Mum! only joking )

Ah, now I followed your advice about the sent mail, but it only stores something like the last 20 - 30, so the essay I wrote about my cat and sent to someone has vanished... not to worry. It is possible to access them, and then save them manually (as far as I can work out) but that's all online time... well, time full stop. Which is at a premium for me, as it is for most people.

I'd be interested to use Outlook while being on AOL, because if I want to use IE, and then contact someone by mail on a clickable link, the outlook program kicks in, but I want to use my normal e-mail account.

Ah the trials and tribulations of the modern world. (not least of which is having a Mum who can see all your h2g2 conversations!! HI Mum! only joking )

Ah, I see what you mean about using Outlook now, threesecond. I always use web-based email these days anyway - mainly my AOL account, but I also have an n2g2 account that I publicise here.

I always have a couple of active ISPs anyway - I have a couple of Freeserve accounts for a couple of websites I've done, plus I like to have alternative methods of getting online if AOL misbehaves (which it hasn't recently). As long as I log on once every three months they stay alive.

Of course the other advantage of AOL mail is that being web-based you can log into their website and read your mail from any computer with any ISP.

That thing with the clickable link is a pain, Sho - I can't think of an easy answer to that one. At least when you save your mails in AOL you aren't cluttering up your hard disk.

Yeah.

I use web-based mail now. My orange account can be web-based or pop3. Ideally, it would be pop3 on my home machine and I would have the advantage of web-based from other machines. Because I use AOL, so it's always web-based as I can't send mail from outlook.

What sites have you done? I'd be interested in viewing them. I'm into a bit of web design myself.

I can't post them here, one of them is commercial.

Mail me at [email protected] (there's a link on my personal space, but it'll launch Outlook! ) and I'll send you the urls. There are two, neither of which is terribly exciting, but visitors are always welcome!