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Technology Stocks : Micron Electronics (MUEI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JC Jaros who wrote (4047)	1/17/2000 8:54:00 AM
From: df	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4074

OT/JC....From a lurker. I've never thought of using AOL. Seems it's for lemmings. Do the 'Net' my way. Anyway please take time and read this clip from a newsletter I get every now and them. Then make a new judgement about Micron. Don't own the stock, but I love their 'Puters'.... Long-time readers may remember my first experience with AOL 5.0 (when I tried to upgrade a system from AOL 4 to AOL 5). I'll spare you the details, but after trying every trick I knew to get the system working properly after the upgrade, the punchline was "Format C:\" I wrote about my unhappy experiences in this newsletter (see langa.com and was amazed at the flood of mail I got in reply from readers whose experiences were as bad-- -or even worse!--- than mine.( See langa.com 4-99.htm#aol1 ) With all that, I decided simply to try avoiding AOL, but it's a marketing behemoth that just won't quit. Day after day, readers would write to me or to the WinMag staff complaining about AOL5.0. Then, last week, with the announcement of AOL taking over Time Warner and becoming the largest online/content source on the planet, it became clear I needed a closer look: Because I knew from reader mail and from painful personal experience that upgrading from 4.0 to 5.0 often brought major trouble, I decided to try a clean install of AOL 5.0. It was eye-opening. In all, I found AOL had added or altered 229 files on my system, including over 4.5MB of Windows system files! It significantly (and unnecessarily) altered my networking setup. It even diddled with Power Management settings in my Registry! I'll detail everything--- including what files were altered, how you can tell what files and settings AOL altered on your machine, which kinds of users and systems AOL is good for, and which it's really bad for--- in this week's column on the WinMag.Com site. (The full column is far too detailed to present in an email, such as this newsletter.) In the end, I did get AOL installed and running. If you're even thinking about using AOL5.0, please check out the column first: It may save you a ton of headaches. If you're already using AOL5, then the column will help you determine exactly what the software already did to your system. And either way, please join in the discussion: Is your AOL experience different from mine? Have you found ways around the upgrade hassles? What do you think the future will hold as AOL emerges as the biggest media company on the planet? Join in the discussion starting in the afternoon, EST (gmt-5) TUESDAY (a day later than normal, due to the US holiday on Monday) 18-Jan-00 at winmag.com