He's not switching to...he'd just rather use a browser outside of AOL Sadly, I'm an AOL user (no high-speed connection available, and AOL (dare I say) was the most steady-connection)...but I haven't had that problem. I have three browsers on the computer though: Firefox, Opra and Internet Explorer...probably used in that order.
As far as your toolbars, to go View->Toolbars->and select any you want that are hidden. Also, you can remove AOL's toolbar by using Windows add/remove, and finding it--it's seperate from AOL. I think that should fix it