A bunch of providers provide anti-virus now. By the way,I too use McAfee, but now I mostly disable their own virus scanner and use free scanner that works really well (McAfee takes too much CPU etc.). Anyways, AOL really IS horrible. They compress content when it goes over their servers to save bandwidth (though you're not paying them to compress, for instance, pictures you want to view and then sending them in some arcane and dumb format few have ever heard of). It IS a pain in the butt to eliminate all that AOL installs on your PC, and when I DID use AOL once, I couldn't even connect without using THEIR crud software that advertises to you even when you've already become their customer. Furthermore, theirs no reason you should have to use THEIR software when it's running atop Internet Explorer. They ARE forcing their users to do what they want: example: if you want to use firefox, you'll have to open their browser, and that one. Not that you might want to use another browser, but a lot of people do. You'll also find it annoying, that if you use their services, it must be their way (by the way, AOL still DOES make modifications in your system I think). Ever use their Music service? You can listen pretty well from their own player and the library of songs you've payed for in THEIR software, but it's a pain to actually find where YOUR music is located on your computer. Strange? Maybe they've changed this since I last experienced it (my own father used to use it), but you quit their service, and the songs you've paid for one by one may no longer be accessible, playable, or whatever.
AOL is a control-freak as a company. They've bought-up and then sat on great companies and watched them die, and now that their old business model is failing (it actually is, their losing customers and subscribers who can get all and more that they offer completely for free, before getting more services when they get a new provider) they're changing some, but not as much as need be. A company doesn't become an angel very quickly-even in 5 years. If you're considering it, run, and if you're using AOL: DITCH IT!