AOL is Dead

Being home has turned out to be a great excuse for me to clean up my parents’ computer for them.  They have been using AOL for as long as I can remember, despite paying for high-speed cable separately.  Even though I’ve been insisting they get rid of it for years and years, they resisted because AOL was “just easier”.  Unfortunately I had to use their computer today, and I simply became too frustrated with the pop-ups and what seemed like 18 Yahoo! toolbars installed on top of each other.  So tonight I did a few things: [1] when their AOL account was left open, I cancelled their service [2] I backed up all of their data and re-installed the operating system - a clean slate. [3] sat them down and organized anything that was important to them - pictures, videos, documents, applications, etc. [4] deleted IE6/7 and installed Firefox [5] showed them how to use FF to access their AOL email through a browser, how to use the AIM client, etc.

If my parents have stopped using AOL, I think it can officially be declared dead.