Curious now as to if it was blended in with the AOL browser in AOL 2.5. I used AOL from versions 2.5 to 7.0 and left them to switch to Juno for free dial up internet. In AOL versions 3.0 to 7.0 I am pretty sure I was using Internet Explorer for all those, but 2.5 which I ran on a Windows 3.11 system, I am thinking that might have been Netscape or AOL's browser prior to merger with Netscape. Thinking back 21 years ago... I just remember using lots of the internal functions of AOL back then. The chat rooms mainly and downloading free DOS games to play on my 386 computer and a pile of 1.44MB disks that I saved all the games to.
The $25 a month for 33.6k connection was too expensive and I was looking for a cheaper internet option. 33.6k was the fastest I could get over crappy old copper phone lines that the local telephone company Fairpoint refused to fix because they claimed it wasnt their problem that I wasnt getting 56k connection. They pointed finger at the ISP as the cause, yet from other locations locally to same dial up numbers others were getting 56k connections. Stuck in the middle of their blame contest when i knew it was junk copper wire that they refused to fix because voice was ok according to them and so dial up should be too, I left AOL in early 2002 when I dropped from the unlimited $25 dial up service to the limited $15 a month service and found a free internet option to dial into Juno which was a local call. Friends were suggesting NetZero and some others but I liked Juno which was free. The biggest pain was trying to get AOL to stop hitting my credit card for $15 a month. It took almost 3 months to get that cleared up. I called them multiple times to stop them from billing me when i cancelled. Final action was taken when I contacted my credit card company that I do not authorize these transactions and I cancelled with AOL 3 months prior. I was then credited for the 3 months that they pretty much refused to stop charging me. And I called them A O (4 letter word starting with H and ending in double L's )
Juno was ok, and I liked the e-mail account they set me up with. I then tried out BlueLight the K-Mart advertising sponsored free internet but didnt like that, and so I stuck with Juno. I then landed a job that the employer was paying for IT employees internet service fees as a means of setting up the employees with remote access to the workplace to be remote admin for the network and systems. Others were able to get DSL but I was on crappy copper still and DSL unavailable in my area due to crappy copper and distance from telephone company DSL backbone. I ended up using two dial up connections then to be able to surf the web with one dial up connection while remote admin over another dial up connection when my employer bought me an additional phone line. This allowed for me to connect over 33.6k on one line and surf the web on another line if needing to research stuff without trying to do both on just 33.6k bandwidth with 2 computers with 56k modems in them. It was a very laggy remote connection of do something and wait for the refresh. And it was easier to just drive 10 miles to work and work on site, however some issues needed to be fixed fast such as Point of Sale issues in which you have customers in lines and the whole front end going down and so I had to fix that over dialup once which was painful using PC Anywhere to a system that acted like a back door and then from that back door system yet another remote connection once authenticated onto the network to then remote using VNC to connect then to the protected secure P.O.S network to fix the issue. PCI Compliance killed off the remote connection stuff.
Finally in 2005 I heard rumors that Adelphia was running broadband through my area. I went to the local building and asked if they had broadband in my area because I need it for business use. A tech or engineer came out and chatted with me and told me that its not really available yet large scale, but that if I want to be a test subject for it that I can get set up with broadband but that there is no guarantees that its going to be problem free, it was just rolled out and its up, but that I should expect issues with it because its not really officially available yet, but its up and running. So I agreed to be a tester for its infancy in my area and they set me up with a 4meg connection and $45 a month for the service in which my employer paid for it all. They just needed to come out to my home to replace a old coax cable that they said is from the 1980s with a new cable from the pole to the home and they drilled a hole and fed in the new cable and everything was solid working for the most part after that.
Its been years since I have used a dialup connection. Last time I can recall using dialup was in 2008 when broadband was down because my wife forgot to pay the bill for 2 months. I ended up using the dialup service that my employer had available to SoverNet to get onto the website and pay the bill over dial up and then had to wait almost 24 hours for them to activate broadband again to Adelphia/Comcast.
Its nice that these days you can just find a wifi somewhere and do what you need to for the most part and broadband or DSL is just about everywhere. I dont miss dialup at all.