You know how you’ve had AOL for like 15 years and you hate it, but you haven’t switched because you so desparately can’t bear to part with that coveted @aol email address. Well, have no fear people, salvation is now at your doorstep, and it goes by the name of “Free AOL”. Starting in early September, (or maybe even now) , you will no longer have to pay for that Edsel of dial-up services in order to maintain your email cool. The upshot of all this is that AOL is basically dropping its ISP business, in favor of a full-on advertiser supported model. Now what will my mother do now?

UPDATE: AOL will make five gigabytes of online storage available free to all Web users by way of its recently acquired Xdrive service. The added storage will enable users to store any type of file and will support a drag-and-drop interface between online storage and hard drive. The storage offering will be available to any users who have an AOL or AIM screenname starting in early September. Sounds interesting, but I don’t think so.