I'm on AOL too. Does it stink? I've kept my AOL address since late 1997 - I've run occasional parallel addresses (e.g. Freeserve and so on) and never found a reason to change. AOL seems to filter out quite a lot of spam and viruses too.

My experience is that people with AOL addresses retain them. Anyone else (except someone on an ac. address) tends to be chopping and changing all the time. Whether that tells us something about the AOL sefvice or the AOL customer base is a valid question. I don't think I fit the stereotypical AOL profile.

It's not cheap, but it provides a reliable service.

I've not noticed any problems recently. I do sometimes log onto aol.com or aol.co.uk from another computer to check my email, and ever so rarely there's a connection problem, which I guess is just volume of traffic.