>
> >If your digest is routinely larger than 25k, it will arrive in the AOL member
> >mailbox as an attachment,
>
> This new policy just adds another prominent example of the deficiencies of
> AOL.  I'm going to have to start actively encouraging my members to find
> another service provider.  This new restriction on e-mail, added to the
> severe mail box limit AOL members already had (and are not informed of) is
> counter-intuitive, to say the least, for a business that has to make itself
> more competitive.  Everyone working for AOL can't be clueless.  I hope that
> someone has the guts to inform their management, which seems oddly divorced
> from the realities of the Internet.
>
 
I'd like to respond as a listowner of 5+yrs (biosph-l), who has seen aol-ians
grow as a percentage of my subscriber list, and as someone who uses AOL as well
as CI$, eW and AlterDial (and GNN)....
 
There are lots of reasons to criticise the larger online services (e.g., for
their need for better education of customers before they hit the lists and
newsgroups), but the issue of MIME attachment doesn't seem to have the same kind
of signicance. If my subscribers want digests, they'd probably prefer them
in one piece; apart from digests, I ask that no one post files bigger than 30k
anyway because of students at some sites whose mail hits their accounts
directly.  Talk about the realities of the internet :)
 
Apart from the training issue, which has caused some accounts to hit mailbox
full or accounts to disappear more than with some other sites, AOL has given
me no more problems than any other site.
 
As for mailbox full... AOL does not have an extremely low limit on mail. One's
eyes would have to be much bigger than his stomach, AND (on the windows client)
one would have to NOT use flashsessions (which save $ anyway) to fill one's
box. In nearly 1.5 yrs the only time I filled up was when a now-former AOL user
mailbombed me.
 
Dave Phillips, list owner, BIOSPH-L, PLEARN-L, NASIRN-L