Disastrous software upgrades are nothing new to AOL, but after all the problems with AOL 5.0, customers expected more from the company's recent AOL 6.0 release.
AOL 6.0 was released late last month and similar problems - such as missing network settings, PC slowdowns and missing e-mail - cropped up immediately. Fortunately, the problems appear to be more sporadic and less severe than those associated with AOL 5.0.
Although most of AOL's more than 25 million customers are consumers, many IT professionals or teleworkers that maintain home offices or multiple ISP accounts could be affected.
AOL 6.0 is the company's first client software designed to serve its dial-up, cable modem and DSL customers. Apparently the one-software-fits-all approach isn't working, as cable modem and DSL customers are reporting the bulk of the problems.
AOL 6.0 boasts some new features such as the ability to check e-mail via a telephone and AOL Anywhere, which lets users customize content that can be viewed via a PC, wireless device or a telephone. But because they couldn't connect, some customers couldn't even give the software a whirl.
One Cox@Home cable modem customer says AOL 6.0 "continually wipes out" all network settings. "Every time I ran [the software] it went into my network properties and changed not only my external [network interface card] settings, but also the internal NIC settings to obtain a dynamic IP address," says Mark Green, a mechanical engineer in Phoenix. The software did this time and again, even though Green had his NIC cards configured for static IP addresses.
AOL did not respond to Green's complaint, nor did the company respond to Network World's repeated requests for information.
To fix the problem, Green ditched AOL 6.0 and reinstalled AOL 5.0, "which doesn't contain the same bug, and all network cards and static IP addresses are stable again," he says.
Another longtime AOL user says the upgrade "has been a disaster."
"I have been using AOL for about five years and have never encountered problems with other upgrades," says Richard Lopez, an attorney in San Francisco. "But this is the first time I have upgraded with a DSL connection."
Problems began immediately after downloading AOL 6.0 from the ISP's Web site.
"AOL 6.0 deleted my TCP/IP and network adapter settings within a few minutes," Lopez says.
After more than four hours of resetting protocol and adapter settings multiple times, an AOL customer service representative told Lopez to delete AOL 6.0 and "forget about the upgrade," he says.
In the process of upgrading to AOL 6.0, Gary McCullough, a public relations director in Washington, D.C., ran into problems. AOL 6.0 now stores e-mail address books to an AOL host computer, but doesn't store subsequent address books from other PCs. After multiple calls into AOL support and getting conflicting information, McCullough, who has multiple PCs and address books but only one AOL account, recovered his more than 1,000 addresses. His wife's e-mail address book was lost.
"I'm ticked," McCullough says.
AOL is more concerned with getting people locked into its service than it is with writing quality software, he says.
"I want to know when they're deleting stuff out of my computer. That's not a high-tech expectation, that's a low-tech expectation," he says.
The tip-oriented Web site, Living with your Computer, says there are three areas of concern with AOL 6.0: the overwriting of Windows files (a key problem with AOL 5.0), problems with HTML e-mail capabilities, and the breaking of existing Internet adapters.
Similar problems were reported on Network World Fusion's AOL 6.0 forum at www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 1642.
Uninstalling AOL 6.0 has not always corrected the problems. Some users say AOL 6.0 makes a previously installed AOL 5.0 client inoperable.
But some customers were satisfied with AOL 6.0. A few AOL customers who have downloaded the latest version of software have e-mailed Network World to say that their systems are working fine.
One analyst says many users have come to expect trouble. "There's a general expectation for glitches in first versions and upgrades," says Lydia Loizides, an analyst at Jupiter Communications in New York.
That's especially true for complex upgrades and diverse audiences, she says.
"Products will never go out at 100% because development cycles would be forever," she says.
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