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Comment by gharman | Hacker News Reader

My elderly father still uses this as his primary gateway to the internet and email. For all intents and purposes, this is the internet to him.

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My mother and her husband still use AOL email, which I thought was bad enough, I managed to persuade them some years ago that they didn't need to use the AOL portal to get at the internet.

I still haven't managed to persuade them to change ISP though, even though AOL removed themselves from the broadband ISP business in the UK, what, 20 years ago? And their connection had been bought and sold by different providers multiple times over those years, my stepfather is concerned that if he changes ISP then the email will no longer know how to find his house.

In the face of this sort of argument, I crumble. They could be paying less for a faster service with better support than they get now, but I guess that's never going to happen.

If it works for them, why change?

The email address? There's no reason they should IMHO. At this point Aol email really has to be one of the longest lived and most stable services out there, and it's weird to even type that :)

The ISP? They could be paying less for a faster connection, and a new ISP would probably throw in a better wireless router than the ancient one they're using (and occasionally having trouble with).

The two are not related - AOL is a free online portal these days, accessible to anyone using any ISP. You can even go there and sign up for free email right now if you want. I can imagine a 'retro' email address fad might hit at some point ...

You can even go there and sign up for free email right now if you want.

Looks like my email address from 1985-1993 is taken. I wonder if at some time it got recycled for lack of use, or if it's still me, but I have no way of logging in to QuantumLink or the old AOL service.

retro_email@aol.com appears to be available though :)

I have no idea if they recycled any addresses, I used to know someone that worked for them about 20 years ago, but she was non-technical and probably wouldn't have access to that info back then. And 20 years ago AOL were already considered outdated and uncool!

My 85YO mother still uses the AOL email address I set up for her in 1996. It works perfectly on her iPad Pro with IpadOS $CURRENT.

I got the iPad-before-the-iPad-before-last. It maxes out at iOS 9. One of the only ways I've got to get ebooks on it is to email them to my 1996 Hotmail address, which is the only one my my half a dozen that iOS 9 Mail can handle.

BTW, others I tried where iOS 9 cannot complete account setup:

* Yahoo

* Gmail

* An IMAP account from 1991

My compliments on one of the few times I've actually seen that phrase used and spelled correctly.

Missed the chance to go with “for all internets and purposes” though.

Could use some porpoises too.

So long, and thanks for all the numeric user IDs.

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