You Get What You Pay For: Blogger & AOL

I've been blogging now since June 2, 2007; not a long time, but long enough to know the ropes a little. I started the blog on a whim because there was a handy "create blog" link, and it was free. It turns out that much of what you can pay for on the internet you can also get for free.

But there is a trade off. Who do you complain to when a free service isn't working right? And do you really have any right to get indignant when they take forever to fix a problem when they are providing you with their service?

I have used America Online as a service provider for about 13 years, give or take. For years, AOL has had a terrible reputation as "internet training wheels," a service filled with newbies. This reputation has been replaced with, "AOL? Is that still around?" But I happen to like the interface. Especially now that I have a wide-screen monitor. It works great in tandem with Internet Explorer's or Firefox's tabbed browser when I'm blogging.

AOL has always had usability issues, but now that the service is free (to people bringing their own high-speed hookup), the problems seem to be worse. Chief among the problems is the program's tendency to get stuck in an error-loop that clogs up your whole computer until it is resolved. For me, this happens any time I've had the AOL program open for several hours. First you lose your right-click menus, then almost any action leads to the Windows error sound, and a meaningless dialog box with an "OK" and a "Cancel" button. No matter what you do after that, click OK, Cancel, the shut down X. . .you get another error box and sound. Hold the "ENTER" key in for several minutes, and (usually) eventually the errors will stop, and the program will close. And sometimes it will take Windows with it, leading to the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death."

Blogger's problems are not so severe. It has an awkward posting interface, with quirkiness in both its "compose" and "html" windows. Linking, adding pictures, and other options sometimes take two or three clicks and other tricks to get them working. Adding a picture to your post will invariably lead to extra spaces between paragraphs. It's as awkward as early page layout programs.

But right now, and for at least five days now, Blogger's spell check feature has stopped working. They are aware of this, but quite silent on the issue. For now, I can copy and paste into Microsoft Word or another program that has a spell checker. But since Blogger has a sort of arcane interface, anything I type loses its formatting (italics, bolding, links). Sigh. Do I have any right to complain, when this whole service is free?