I went online tonight to do some research for my mom and dad regarding their AOL accounts. First I realized that my dad has been a member since 1996. Wow, time has flow. I was poking around his account for him so I can figure out how to keep his email address (and my mom’s) but not pay the BYOP monthly charge of $14.95. They have been paying that to keep the simplicity of AOL for years after they switched to Road Runner cable. Now a days they don’t use the service for anything more than checking email, so why pay for all those extra features. It turns out that AOL got wise and is now offering a basic BYOP plan for free, as long as you don’t use any premium features. That works perfectly for them. I was set to move them to google apps. I even had a domain name bought and configured for them before I figured out I didn’t need to move them. Lets hope that there is no hidden gotcha’s to this change, but from AOL’s web page it doesn’t look like there is.
Not having to cancel their account is also very helpful for me too. I totally forgot that my AIM screen name is in fact an screen name attached to my dad’s account. The screen name pre-dated my use (or the existence for that matter) of AIM. I used to use it for some web hosting back in the day. I haven’t logged into the AOL software in so long (for the record it hasn’t been on my computer in years) that I forgot that it was a screen name and not a stand alone AIM name. I might have had problems if i canceled the account and wanted to use the screen name for AIM. Not having to deal with the issue is a good thing, especially since I don’t really want to change it. It is like a phone number, it hasn’t changed in years and everyone I know has it.