In computer news this week:

Leaving AOL - the final chapter ...

I started modeming at 300 baud in the 70's, and the only online service was one called The Source. Modem speeds evolved to 9600 baud in the 80's and the big online service was Compuserve. I switched to AOL in the early 90's and it was a superior service. Modem speeds went to 56K and AOL grew to the world's largest online service, and now their service in my opinion has degraded to the point where it is unusable, unreliable and dangerous.

I 've switched to another ISP and I will give you an opinion of them next year. But in leaving AOL, or whatever online service you happen to be on, there's a lot of housekeeping chores you need to do.

A friend of mine just told me "I could never switch off AOL, I have my aol email address on all my letterhead and business cards...". The solution to this problem is to generate your own letterhead and business cards from your computer, using word, or the avery label program, or other programs. This way you're never stuck with 5,000 sheet of unusable letterhead.

The biggest problem you really face is notifying everyone on your mailing list that you now have a new email address. Some isp services have anticipated this problem, and offer programs that will send your new email address to everyone in your current mailing list, and then convert it to theirs. This may be a manual task with other isp's. However, you need to do this, otherwise your email will drop to nothing and noone will be able to contact you.

Another AOL problem to is converting all your favorite places to another service. If you have been using Netscape or Internet Explorer with AOL, this will not be a problem, because your new service will let you use either of these browsers, and you will retain all your favorites places and settings. However, not many AOL users know you can use a different browser other than AOL's, which is a modified version of Internet Explorer. To use a different browser, simply connect to AOL, then minimize it and open and use whichever other browser you wish to. This way you're just using AOL to connect to the internet, as opposed to using the proprietary aol browser.

You will have to cancel your aol service, which is one of the #1 complaints about AOL being slow about. The number is 1-888-265-8008. They should cancel your account within one billing cycle. If not, you have a complaint.

The next issue is converting your web page if you have one to your new service. You should have a directory on your computer that has all the current html code to your webpage, so you can easily upload it to your new service. If not, you will have to download everything from aol and then reupload it.

Whatever service you switch to, you will be using a different email system, and this my take a little getting used to. Not a big problem. You do have to be more careful though of computer viruses which target the universal internet mail protocols. On the other hand you should see a drastic reduction in spam email, which now is growing exponentially on AOL with the Christmas rush.

Leaving AOL - it's really a good feeling to me, no regrets. I almost left twice before and in each instant the ISP I would have gone to went out of business or was bought out by a bigger service. That meant having to do all the things I just mentioned again and again, which I wouldn't look forward to.

There's only 1 thing I fear right now - and that's receiving a notification sometime in the future from my new ISP that they've been sold - to AOL !!! Please, Santa Claus, say it isn't so.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 Email: fdspokane@aol.com