Hahaha. No.

What do you think the whole point of AOL using proprietary software is? To keep you using their stuff and have no freedom of choice.

I had a lovely chat with their tech support trying to find out what their SMTP server address was. I wanted it to update my settings in Outlook Express for my other email accounts. They said they don't use SMTP so I couldn't use OE anymore to send mail for my other accounts, they couldn't send it. They also dodged my questions by giving me answers to questions I didn't ask (I wish I had a transcript of that chat).

Anyway. It seems they were lying. Even though my OE settings still say smtp.earthlink.net for outgoing server, I send mail for both my school and .mac account from OE and they get to their destinations. They get picked up by an AOL server with "relay" in its name of all things and get sent out to the net by AOL. I didn't see "earthlink" once in the entire route trail.

You have to check your AOL email either while in AOL or through their webmail interface if you're on some other internet connection. If there is a way to access it with another mail client, they wont tell you.