<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Finally figured it out: somehow the Accounts-->Security-->Allow specific people radio button got checked. Apparently, if you only "allow" specific people to message you, then anyone not on the list disappears from the buddy list. AOL's preference must override this when you're logged in with both iChat AV AND AOL. <DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>What's really weird is that I know I never changed that setting...and it ended up on both my iBook and my iMac. I'm sure it's a .Mac/iDisk sync thing going on. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I simply switched back to "Privacy Level: Allow anyone" and everything's working great :-)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I use AOL primarily from entropy: I've had the same email address for 13 years, and still get emails from people I've lost touch with over the years. I do occasionally use the dialup feature when travelling, but have connected to AOL via TCP/IP since at least 1994. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Michael</DIV><DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Oct 28, 2005, at 1:47 AM, Stroller wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Coincidentally, AOL offered me 60 days free this week and I tried to sign up for it, but was unable to do so because I wasn't prepared to give them legitimate billing details. I wouldn't use AOL for my main ISP connection but AOL users do seem to like it and I thought it'd be interesting to see what the Mac AOL application looks like. I hear that some of the chat rooms are quite good, but I can't see myself paying money for AOL's package.</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">I would be extremely interested to hear of any progress you make tracking this down, or of any further symptoms you manage to isolate through experimentation.</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Stroller.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>