AOL! Get Your Free AOL!

Got broadband? Come September, you'll be able to get on AOL for free. That's right. All the chat rooms, the goofy games, that inimitable aol.com email address. All free.

There's a catch, of course. To make up the $2 billion in subscription fees it's losing thanks to this, AOL will be jamming even more advertisements into its already ad-flooded service. If you're a dialup user, you'll still have to pay, of course, though not nearly as much. The old, absurd $25.90 a month access fee (probably a big reason why a third of AOL's subscribers have jumped ship in the last four years) is now becoming just $9.95 a month.

Well, it's a plan, I guess. Most observers have yawned at the news, seeing AOL as a dinosaur that was instrumental in introducing many people to the internet but has long since outlived its usefulness. Personally, I've never kept an AOL account alive past the 30-day free trial. The software's gotten so bloated of late that AOL actually had to release a cleanup application so users could rid their computers of all the junk AOL installations leave behind.

Then again, after all its recent bad press and financial free-fall, AOL clearly had to do something—anything—to turn the tide. Will it work? I doubt it. But you tell me: Does the prospect of being free sound enticing enough to get you to sign up?