It seems to me that putting down AOL serves no purpose.  No provider has
done more to open the Internet up to the world.  Clearly, there are
problems, and many of them are the result of the vast number of messages
that must be processed. But if we believe that the Internet should not
be the prerogative of the privileged few then we should support AOL and
be of assistance when they experience problems.  Other providers experience
serious malfunctions, but they are not as widely publicized, simply because
those providers are smaller.  Yesterday, one of my providers manages to
lose some 800 messages in my inbox (yes, I had saved most of them to disk).
It was not a pleasant experience, but the Internet does not come with a
100% guarantee, and I, personally, am amazed at how well things work most
of the time, given the potential for problems.  (This was supposed to
be "managed to lose" -- I am using a primitive VAX/VMS mail utility
with a line editor).

Ingrid