free AOL wireless router! and £5 discount

latania_2

hi there,
a week ago i told AOL i wanted to leave there broadband service and they have given me a free speed touch wireless modem/router + pc card and a £5 discount on my monthly charges! cant be bad i thought!
thought those of you out thereon AOL might want to know!
+ with a router you dont have to have all of AOL's rubbish running on your computer !! yippeeee

nick_b

latania wrote:

with a router you dont have to have all of AOL's rubbish running on your computer !! yippeeee

Uh? How does having a router stop AOL putting all their crappy software on your computer? The only decent thing to do with those AOL CDs is to make this snazzy sextant. Come on kids, it's educational!

latania_2

hi, with a wireless router/modem that becomes your broadband connection point,
so your computer does not need any of AOL's software at all as you are connecting to the router not AOL, if that makes any sence?

Poppycat

The freebies forum is for items that are free title says "Freebies (no spend required)" in order to even remotely get these items you have to spend money to join aol dont you?

rogue_element

Why bother with AOL anyway....???
So I've heard it slow and you have to have Windows/Mac to run their crappy software. Even when you have a router, I believe you have to use the software as a modem - that is, you have to do the job a modem/router does. I think AOL uses a proprietary PPPoE protocol, so it doesnt work with standard modem/routers.

Little_Miss_Scrimper

Thanks Latania, I am on AOL too and I am happy with the connection & service just want to reduce my broadband costs!! - even though I am on the silver. Can you tell me, did you get the £5 discount for being on the basic/silver service? I am new to all this so would be handy if you could tell me what you said to get the free stuff & discount! Knowing my luck I'll say I want to leave and they'll accept! lol

latania_2

little miss,, it does not matter what level of service you have with them, just say that you are going to walk and they will drop the price,,! well they did with me anyway,, but the best thing is , with a router/modem you can get rid of all the AOL stuff that you would normally have to have running to acces the net!

Little_Miss_Scrimper

Thanks latania, i'll give it a try!

GhostHunter_3

Hi

Is this router the same as a wirless connection (eg using a mobile SIM via a slot in the side of laptop) If so how much does the monthly bill come to?

I am still with AOL (just) but because I conect wirelessly via an Orange 3G datacard and my phoneline isnt connected to AOL (because I have no landline for the internet) when I rang AOL to end my dial up subscription advising them I no longer had a landline they said I could still have ALL the benefits of the top BroadBand package but for just £3 per month, no catches or hidden costs! If they hadnt offered such a deal I would have told tem to forget it as the one drawback is the datacard costs but as we have no landline its justified.

If it is what I think it is I may look into getting one from AOL if their rates are cheaper. I dont even have any of AOL software on my computer I just type in the web address and sign in. Bit annoying though when you cant access your billing details etc as dont have keyword facility.

Nevermind.
Cheers



So now I simply use AOL as a backup email.

stugib

rogue_element wrote:

Why bother with AOL anyway....???
So I've heard it slow and you have to have Windows/Mac to run their crappy software. Even when you have a router, I believe you have to use the software as a modem - that is, you have to do the job a modem/router does. I think AOL uses a proprietary PPPoE protocol, so it doesnt work with standard modem/routers.

Nope, I've got an off-the-shelf modem/wireless router and it works with AOL Silver fine (don't believe the claims that you need Gold or Platinum to use wireless - they just won't help you set it up if you have problems). It doesn't use a proprietary protocol but you do have to change one setting (which I can't remember off hand - MTU?) on your router setup from the default value. All the step-by-step instructions are on the AOL UK site.

I use Firefox so there's no AOL software required to browse - I do still have it installed from when I first used a wired modem but it knows nothing about my new modem and I've never connected through it since I upgraded to wireless.

AOL gets a lot of grief but I suspect a lot of it is its reputation from past mistakes with proprietary, uninstallable software. I'm perfectly happy with it so far after my first 6 months. Very few dropouts, good enough speed (I can only get 512k with my distance from my exchange, so can't vouch that higher bandwidths are throttled or have too high a contention), and speeds should improve once they start the local loop unbundling and move away from BTs restrictions.

Stuart