The listing, "AOL 9.0 Optimized" CD - NIB [Advertising Ephemera] has ended.
AOL 9.0 Optimized CD, still in its original shrink-wrap and 5.5"x7.5" clear plastic case.
If you have a love/hate relationship with advertizing, this item is for you! And, it is difficult to acquire the whole series, so here's a chance to fill in that hole in your collection.
In numerous variations and versions from 1993 to 2006, AOL CDs were bulk mailed promising (in this version) "1099 hours FREE! for 50 DAYS".
"Free hours of WHAT?", you might ask.
In those earlier days of Internet service, you had to pay for your access to whatever was available online by the hour. (That got very expensive, very quickly!) AOL, one of many newbie services competing for users, would allow you all those hours for free when you installed their software on your computer, but you had to use them up in the time specified (no roll-over).
To start with there are only 1200 hours in 50 days, so who exactly could use the 1099 hours being offered in this come-on? [Sounds impressive, though.]
Once you'd installed the software and signed in, anything which AOL could reach, you could use, with some restrictions on specific items involving extra fees.
They knew that most people weren't computer savvy enough to fully uninstall the software and/or were complacent enough to just keep using it, once the free month of hours had expired.
So, for a while, they had 'hooked' a whole user school of fish. Then, the business tide surged, rearranged the sands of Internet service provision, and left AOL on the rocks.