AOL Gold is a disaster! The worst "upgrade" yet! I know you have told us that the "security" is better, but I can't see one single way how that manifests. Actually, there is not one thing in this Desktop Gold that is an improvement over 9.8.2, and in many ways, the software is FAR worse. Here's a detailed list of my complaints:

1. EVERYTHING you do is slower. Every single action taken. Anything you click on takes longer to pop up than ever before. This applies to clicking on a hot link, on a photo, on your mailbox, on any individual mail, on "next" when seeing a slideshow, etc. EVERY SINGLE ACTION you try to take is slower to happen. How on earth do you call this an upgrade? And what does having "better security" have at all to do with slower functioning?The delay which now happens when you click on something, sometimes as long as a full 3 seconds, was NEVER there on any of your previous AOL versions. It makes the overall experience worse than ever before, and clearly more time-consuming.

2.When you click on your mailbox to see what mails you have, there is an ad covering about one quarter of the page, that was on the bottom in 9.8.2, but now is on the right side, covering many of the email subject headings. So you have to expand the box to see the complete heading. This also applies to the text of the email itself, which is now much narrower because of the ridiculous and obnoxious placement of that ad. How on earth is this an improvement, for your members, over the ad being on the bottom? If anything, it shows that you bowed to the advertisers to place the ad vertically, rather than horizontally on the bottom, to place it more in our faces. Is that fair to your loyal members? We now have to expand things to see what was easily visible before! It is an absolutely disgusting aspect of Desktop Gold.

1. When you want to find, and return to, a previous AOL page, all you had to do in 9.8.2 (and all previous versions) was to click on the "down" arrow to the right of the address box. That would bring up the last 100 or so sites you visited. Every single one. But that isn't true any more. Now the list often is missing many of the last ten to twenty sites. It is now a digest, rather than an actual list of ALL sites, as many are missing. How is that an improvement over previous AOL versions? And why on earth would this function be WORSE in a supposed "upgrade"?

2. in previous versions, you used to be able to block any further unwanted emails from a sender by just right-clicking on the sender's address, and then clicking on "block" from the list that appeared. That no longer works. Now, you have to 1)copy the address, 2)open up AOL Mail, 3)click on "block unwanted mail", 4)paste the address into the box, then, 5)click on "save". Five tedious steps instead of one step. Why on earth would you have purposely removed the right-click blocking function in this supposedly "improved" AOL software? How in the world is removing a very important and convenient function an "improvement" over the previous software? Simple answer - it isn't. So why would your software developers have purposely removed this function? Simply disgusting!

3. Many times (but not always) while typing an email quickly, there is a one or two second hesitation before a block of two or three words appear. That NEVER happened in any previous AOL version, and is annoying. Very annoying.

4. I liked the fact that in ALL previous versions of AOL, the favorites list was always arranged as I chose it to be. I would often group many things one after the other, such as multiple sites on the same topic, or many different movie and TV quizzes, etc. Suddenly, and with no warning whatsoever that this was going to happen - the favorites list is now alphabetized. Now it's MUCH harder to find certain things than you think. Oh, you may say, you can always do a search for a specific site, but I often don't remember the exact title of that site! And even if I did, it's still an extra step that was unnecessary before, when, for example, I had twenty television quizzes in a row (sometimes having the word "TV" in the heading, sometimes "show", sometimes "program", etc.) Now, I would have to go finding those saved sites, with multiple queries, as opposed to just visiting them one after another in their ordered placement on my favorites list. And even if I can find them with that search function - why should I have to, when, before, I had them all in a row? And that same ability to search would still be there even had you left the order in the way I liked it before. So instead of offering us the OPTION of having the favorites list alphabetized - you forced it upon us! Why not offer that option? And, once you have a search bar, what the heck is the need to force alphabetizing it? What advantage does that carry? Another absolutely horrendous and totally unnecessary change. So why did you force it upon us?

7.Holding down on the space bar, instead of leading to a smooth lateral movement of the cursor, most often leads to a jumpy movement, with several delays. No, it is not a problem with my computer, as it does not happen on any other site nor when I'm just typing in Microsoft. It is most definitely a software issue with the Desktop Gold.

Folks, when I've called to complain, I have actually been told, by multiple technical support people, that the Desktop Gold is a "work in progress". A WORK IN PROGRESS? This is a program that you advertised for MANY months before it came out. So, in other words, you had a very long time to fix the glitches, and did absolutely nothing. Many of the above complaints were given to your tech support people MONTHS AGO, when I first was able to test this "upgraded" software. And not a **** thing has been done, as of yet, to correct one single one of the problems I've reported. So what on earth have your software developers been doing all this time? A "work in progress" means attempts are being made to improve it. Yet you folks have not improved one single thing since my first complaints months ago! I also don't understand this "work in progress" nonsense. If the software wasn't yet ready - WHY ON EARTH DID YOU BASICALLY FORCE US TO SWITCH TO IT NOW??!?!! How would you feel if you bought a car that had many problems with it, a car that you were FORCED to buy, that was FAR worse in every single way than the previous model? Would you find it acceptable if the manufacturer told you, after you were forced to buy it, that it's a "work in progress"? Are you kidding me? If it was still a work in progress, then you should have waited to work out the glitches before forcing your members to buy it. Any other company that pulled this kind of **** (sorry, but that's exactly what the "work in progress" excuse is...) would be forced out of business!

Folks, as I've already said - THERE IS NOT ONE SINGLE THING IN AOL DESKTOP GOLD THAT IS AN IMPROVEMENT OVER 9.8.2. Not one single thing! And MANY aspects of this "upgrade" are FAR worse than 9.8.2, and even than so many of the previous versions!

The fact that you folks FORCED us to download AOL Gold is something you never did before. If I was happy with an older AOL version, I was always able to keep using it for as long as I wanted rather than having to download an upgrade I didn't like nor want. But being FORCED to download this horrendous software, which has not one single improvement over 9.8.2, and in so many ways is MUCH WORSE - is disgusting. obnoxious, and reprehensible! The only reason I'm sticking with AOL is because, in general, it has always been the best software out there. But this carelessly developed, lower quality Desktop Gold has me questioning my loyalty. And the disgusting "it's a work in progress" nonsense is so very irresponsible, especially in something we were FORCED to download. An overall horrible actual downgrade, rather than the upgrade you claim it to be. You should recall the Desktop Gold software, and let us go back to 9.8.2, until you can fix the obvious problems with this horrible "upgrade". Admit your mistakes, fix the obvious problems with this cynical downgrade, and stop calling something which should have been a fixed, finished product months ago a "work in progress".

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