Exgi,
I've tried AOL as a new web surfer and sh*t canned it pretty quickly. It's kind of a web within a web and not a bad place to start when you are learning. My kids enjoyed it. They are anti gun though. Next I went to MSN and used them for a couple of years. I had no complaints until the last 6 months or so. I believe they are over selling their service, at least in my area of NC. Performance was terrible to the point that it almost became unusable. I just got a cable modem installed and life is good. Just a couple dollars more than MSN a month and you get blinding speed. No matter what service you use I would seriously consider getting away from dial up connections if you haven't already.
The engineers at work all recommend Mindspring and Earthlink.
Good Luck
Rocketman