can’t say i remember much from using winME. maybe i blocked it out, haha.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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So they were just giving away America Online by the 700 hour quantity? I now blame AOL for more than I had previously considered.
Look up the phrase "eternal September."
It started small and they kept growing in how many free hours. It didn't stop at 700. I'm not sure where it stopped.
700 hours is about a month of nonstop use (not that people stayed connected all day back then). Not a bad offer from AOL's perspective, if you rolled into a subscription lasting years.
And I'm guessing enough boomers DID subscribe for years to make it worth it, if my anecdotal experience is anything close to normal.
Can concur. My baby boomer dad was an AOL subscriber up until his death in 2021. He ditched dialup in 2002 but just never stopped paying for AOL.
I used to work for/with AOL in the 2010s. They still had a lot of grannies subbed to dial-up plans.
Yeah, I guess if they would have framed it as one month free it wouldn't sound as good. I remember using it and completely ignoring everything but the actual Internet. Trolling on AIM back in the day was pretty fun.
I seem to remember our first disks/discs coming in with 5 free hours. That might’ve even been included with a Packard Bell we bought.
For a while, if you were broke, you got as much internet as you wanted as long as you left the registration screen open and the modem connected....