John Rumm wrote:
raden wrote:

Which is almost impossible to remove without reinstalling the OS

Used to be true a few years ago - but I have managed to migrate people
ot other ISPs with out any difficulty from about version 7 onwards...
(there was a class action in the US that helped them change their minds
about the policy of knobbling the OS so that it could never connect to
any other ISP again!)

AOL uses a form of IE that is peculiar to their own service. It means
that they can protect newbies far better than might be the case with
off the shelf ware. It also means they can identify all the problems
that arise with the small selection of OSs available to run their
software on.

I suppose that is why they can afford to run such excellent free help.