When did aol begin offering free trials for dial up internet
connection? I'm talking about that time when they started mailing
people those cd's which gave you a password and you had a bunch of
free hours to use. How long did that go for?

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Clarification of Question by funkychickensoup-ga on 18 Oct 2003 19:05 PDT

so...when did the heavy saturation begin?

I'm not sure exactly when it began, but it was long enough ago that
they started with floppies, not CDs.  And they are still doing it,
though it is not as ubiquitous.  For awhile you could hardly buy a
computer magazine without an AOL disk included.  I even got some given
to me on airline flights, along with the peanuts.

According to the corporate AOL site's history, found at...

http://www.corp.aol.com/whoweare/history.html

...the DOS version of AOL was launched in February 1991.
I can recall purchasing a case of 50 AOL-DOS floppies at
an amateur radio convention in Dallas in the early '90s (for $11).
Many of the disks, once formatted, a still quite usable.  I still
have a consider number of the 1 case I bought, one of which I
have just scanned and posted at...

http://www.thehomeland.org/aol15cdos.jpg (86k)

...which is Version 1.5c NEA.  I am not sure whether it included
an offer or not, but I am sure it probably did.  When I first
discovered the internet, I used the DOS version of AOL for quite
some time depsite there being a Windows 3.1 version already.
I am fairly certain, however, that they did not use the pre-formed
username/login because those (to my knowledge) are actually
indicators of which commission to credit.  For instance, if you
use the user/pass from a CD acquired at a post office instead of
from the mail, they'll know by the specific user/pass that it came
from the post office (and likely credit them a commission fee).
To my knowledge the DOS version or Windows 3.1 versions did not
do this -- you merely signed up, possibly with a free trial period.
The service plan I had for DOS was, if I recall correctly, 30 hours
per month @ $19.95, with a surcharge for any extra hours.  I think 
I had a bill for $75 one month because I went over too long.

Thanks. I had no idea it had been going for so long.

As I recall, the original launch of the AOL brand was a free trial for
some users of the Macintosh, back in 1989. That was very limited,
however, something of a beta test, not the saturation distribution
that came later.

hlabadie-ga

so...when *did* the heavy saturation begin?