AOL 8

Beyond the smoother, curved graphics, the latest revision of AOL's online client it doesn't immediately look all that different to AOL 7, but a peek under the hood and some time spent playing with its new features soon makes the current release start to look very long in the tooth indeed.

The average AOL member spends more than an hour every day using the service to either browse the web or read the service's proprietary content channels.

AOL, like everyone else, though, seems to have realised that 'stickiness' is no longer just a matter of great content. With a greater number of sites on the web offering the same or better content for free there needs to be a compelling reason to use a paid-for service.

So, there are better spam filters, pop-up blockers on the browser and the all-new AOL Companion, which we predict will be a permanent feature of a broadband user's desktop.

AOL has come up with some positive action in grappling with spam. Email is now sorted automatically into one of four groups.

The 'People I Know' are those who feature in your address book - which is also much improved with custom categories and the automatic addition of friends on your messenger buddy list. 'Bulk senders' are those AOL has identified as sending emails by the bucket-load, while 'Everyone' and 'People I don't know' speak for themselves.

Other email innovations include auto responders that reply to your mail when you're on holiday, 'share' buttons on the top of AOL channel windows for sending the channel hyperlinks to your email or messenger contacts, and a spam button for reporting unwelcome emails to the AOL staff.

The web page pop-up blocker is more intelligent than a simple window killer. Rather than zap the ads entirely, they are merely suppressed, with a small indicator at the bottom of the browser window showing how many have been stamped on.

Clicking it lets you see what you've missed; in our experience it's rarely anything worth reading, but it's good to know you won't browse straight past a warning from your online bank.

The Companion, though, is the real innovation. This floats outside of the AOL window and gives access to online services while you're using other applications. It will shrink to a slim indicator showing just the number of messages and Aim sessions you have waiting, or expand to offer a wide range of supplementary services, such as Google searching, film finding or road mapping.

Sadly it wasn't clever enough to realise that PCW's office is in the middle of London's entertainment district, and it confidently assured us that there were no cinemas showing The Recruit anywhere nearby.

Our only other complaint surrounded the installation routine, which bombed out on our Windows 2000 system when not logged in as Administrator, in spite of having sufficient access rights.

Beyond that, it was a simple process, and the client even had a go at picking the most appropriate dial-up number based on where we were calling from. Somehow it was convinced that we would need a freephone number, but we were roughly kicked off, as soon as it connected, for not having the right kind of account.

Manually selecting a new number sorted things out, but considering many first-time users will be attracted to AOL by virtue of its soft option reputation this is somewhat slack.

There are a number of quirky, but less vital features, such as animated smilies, wallpaper backgrounds for your Aim messages and a theme option that will change the client's entire interface. Our review code came with just a small selection of themes installed, but we didn't find any we liked as much as the default blue.

The overall feeling here is of a sturdy client with some truly innovative enhancements we'd like to see incorporated into the likes of Outlook, Mozilla, Eudora and the whole gamut of non-AOL online clients.

Whether they are enough to tempt new members into the AOL fold remains to be seen, but they certainly warrant an upgrade for existing users.

Price: Client software free; £5.95/month for light access (less than seven hours/month); £10.99/month off-peak access; £15.99/month for dial-up access; £27.99/month for broadband access

Contact: AOL
www.aol.com

System requirements:

• Pentium processor
• Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• 64MB Ram (128MB for XP)
• 200MB of free hard disk space
• 800 x 600 resolution in 256 colours
• 28K modem
• IE5 (IE6 for XP)