Saved by the .exe

Posted on March 2, 2003 by Gene

Today I bought a new scanner, fed up with the buggy old one that only runs in OS 9, and then only sometimes.
In the box with the new one was an AOL 7.0 disc, touting 2 free months. I haven’t used AOL since 1992 – shortly after they opened the flood gates to PC users and the service became a black hole of inanity.
Well, I thought, I’ll get online for one night just to poke around. So, I opened the disc. It says on it: “MAC USERS: Double-click on the Install icon for AOL 5.0.” OK, well, first of all, it says AOL 7.0 on all the packaging. Is there no AOL 7.0 for Mac? Secondly, there’s no “Install icon for AOL 5.0″ anywhere on this disc. Just a bunch of PC crap. EXE files and INF files. And the read me file just promotes AOL without giving any useful information – like how to install it. So much for the vaunted “easiest way to get on the Internet.” I also discovered that the latest version of AOL is 8.0 – unless you’re using a Mac. That’s stuck at 5.0. Remember, this is a service that began as Mac only. Sad.
Well, that just saved me from being pulled into AOL again. Thank goodness.