So after reading that AOL is now offering their service for free, I decided to try it out as I’ve never used it before (that’s right, I’ve never used it). So I went to their website and picked a username; harder than it sounds as the millions of users already have the cool ones, so I managed to get scottgrubyrules. I logged in and must say that I’m underwhelmed. First off, it isn’t a universal binary, so it can’t run natively on my Mac. Second, the interface is straight out of user interface hell. There are modal dialogs everywhere and reminds me of the few times I used eWorld back in 1997. The Mac software doesn’t seem to let me do 2 things at once, so while it is off munching on a web page, I can’t click the other ugly icons on the menu bar. The email interface is poor at best and it wasn’t a great experience for the 10 minutes I played with it. I’m not sure what AOL really has to offer for anyone that already has broadband. I clicked on the Calendar button in the toolbar and got a web page saying that it wasn’t compatible with my browser. Then the fan on my machine came on as the app pegged the CPU. All in all, probably not a product I’ll fire up again. However, I now have a super cool new email address (OK, not really).