I am not hooked up with AOL but did receive a "free" 3 month trial disc from them..my question, if I install it, will I be able to access the travel message boards offered by AOL?

Yes, but why would you want to? This board is much more informative, less one-sided, less intolerant of differing opinions, less sounding like a broken record, less dominated by a clique... you get the idea.

If it loads AOL you should be able to get the boards. Go to "Travel" and then "message boards". There are LOTS!

And don't pay any attention to "ex-aoler"--lots of good info and help and none of the nonsense--on the AOL boards. On the "international" boards it is very stupid and out of control.

I agree with Gretchen -- yes, you will be able to access the AOL travel boards, and please ignore x-aoler. Some of the AOL boards do have bullies or cliques, but most do provide lots of useful information. Furthermore, you will still be able to access Fodors, so you will be able to post in both places and judge for yourself!

Don't let the first response deter you. There is very good advise and info on the AOL board just like this one. The real value in any of these boards is to cross reference, validate and check on information and hunches you develop from a variety of sources. Clearly no message board can claim it doesn't have "trolls" or very self centered and opinionated contributors but my experience suggests each has certain contributors who are sincere and very knowledgable. It takes a while to weed out the bad and learn the tone of each board but its all worthwhile. Paul

I have AOL and I quit looking at their travel boards because they frustrated and annoyed me. But that said, if you have 3 free months decide for yourself. You have nothing to lose.

canuck: you will be able to access the travel board with your trial copy. The AOL Board is highly seperated by country within broad geographical areas (continents?). Consequently, there isn't the interplay we find here with anyone able to comment on anything. If you are in "Belgium", you will only be able to get/give information on Belgium. While there isn't as much fun, you will find, mostly, very direct, useful information; very few whackos, trolls and nasties. But, again, not as much fun as Fodor's and, let's face it, it is easy to avoid the wayward.

That reminds me of one advantage of the AOL boards: people have to post under their real AOL names, so if you think anyone is really stupid or obnoxious, you can just use AOL's special feature to block them, and you'll never have to look at one of their posts again.<BR><BR>The truly sick obsessive obnoxious members do keep changing their ID's to get around this, but it cuts down drastically on the total number of trashy obnoxious posts, compared to sites that have no registration system at all.

Be careful with AOL's software. Once you install it in your computer, it does not allow other internet dial-ups to work properly. We had AOL and when we switched to mindspring, AOL kept interfering even after we supposedly unistalled it. The mindspring tech people I spoke to were quite familiar with the AOL interference.

If you had contacted AOL tech rather than Mindspring, they could have told you an easy way to disable that AOL feature. I've had AOL with alternative ISP's with no problem at all. People are always badmouthing AOL for problems that are really related to their own lack of understanding of its features.

Well, I sure hope that AOL tech reps were EVENTUALLY able to solve the problem, because AOL got sued over the incompatability of their program with other ISP's. But for months, they were very unwilling to help.<BR><BR>If you do a search on the Internet you will see that even tech experts have had great trouble completely uninstalling AOL and restoring corrupted files.

Be careful, I'm so sorry, I misunderstood your problem. If I had read more thoughtfully, I would have noticed the "uninstall" comment. Your problem isn't AOL, it's that you're not using a Mac!