Word: aol
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...intense, and he's holding a sword. It's an image designed to appeal to older audiences - the same moviegoers who embraced that other fantasy franchise launched a year ago, Lord of the Rings. The competition between Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter - the sibling rivals of the AOL Time Warner corporate family - is intense. Last year's Fellowship of the Ring, the first of three J.R.R. Tolkien-based movies released by the company's New Line division, came in second at the box office behind Harry Potter. Unlike Potter, however, it ended up on numerous critics' best...
...tested MSN 8, I was pleasantly surprised that less than a third of the spam I received landed in my In box; the rest was automatically funneled to the junk mailbox. MSN 8 also provides automated virus checking and full-text search for messages in your In box. AOL 8's mail, on the other hand, is mostly playing catch-up; the program only now auto-completes addresses after you type in the first few letters (something MSN has done for years...
...AOL 8 does, however, have some clever touches. You can search chat rooms by words being used in live discussions, not just by the name of the chat room. I like the idea but had mixed results with the searches I tried. A new MusicShare feature lets you send your buddies links to song clips right through the instant-message window. And if your dial-up connection gets dropped, a handy new Auto-Reconnect feature gets you back online in seconds...
With 35 million subscribers worldwide (vs. 9 million for MSN), AOL will continue to have the edge, if only from subscriber inertia. But that may not last long. Microsoft's $21.95-a-month charge is $1.95 less than AOL's, and its broadband access ranges from $40 to $50 a month, vs. $55 for AOL. MSN subscribers also get free versions of Microsoft's encyclopedia and bill-paying and photo-editing software...
...were a new online subscriber, I would choose MSN over AOL. Its interface is just as easy for newbies to learn and use, and you can always keep in touch with AOL buddies through the free AOL Instant Messenger program. But for those who enjoy AOL members-only chat rooms and message boards, the new features are reason enough to stick around. At least until MSN 9 comes...