I have an elderly, handicapped pro bono client who is STILL using AOL dial-up for Internet access. But every time she tries to update her Norton anti-virus definitions or update Windows, her AOL connection times out after 10 minutes of no keyboard input, and she’s knocked off-line.
AOL has told me that the 10 minute timeout is built-in to their dial-up service and there’s no way to defeat this — unless she sits at her keyboard for hours on end and presses a key every nine or so minutes. But this is insane!
Is there some way to overcome this timeout limitation, perhaps by writing a batch-file to ping the server every so often or by using an add-on utility to generate an esc key-press every nine or so minutes? Or is there some better, simpler way to solve her problem?
I’ve done a lot of Google searches. But I haven’t come up with a good solution yet.
I get no compensation from helping this client. But good deeds are rewarded eventually!