AOL is bad...yes...but...
They are the only ISP that seem to give me a steady connection. MSN, Netzero/Juno, PeoplePC, etc. Never did, or if they did, they had a 4 hour limit or some garbage like that (NZ!)
AOL is damn expensive at $23.99, but like someone else said, some of us have to deal with dial-up. Broadband, nor dsl/cable is available. It is dial-up or DirecWay ($800+ to setup, $60/mo w/2yr contract and BAD reviews)...for now.
As far as their spyware...
AIM: Use Trillian or Deadaim (or a varient).
Delete all the crap AOL installs with itself.
As to someone saying you can't kill it while it forces updating...you can kill it easily by killing the process "waol".
The thing that pisses me off the most though, is that even AFTER charging this much, they still have ads on their email/main pages... ridicleous.
And never use the in-aol browser. Even though it's IE, it sucks. Open up an external IE or use Firefox/Opera.