Downloading AOL software for Windows 95 takes plenty of drive.

America Online, fighting for survival in an online world dominated by the Internet, has come out with yet another edition of version 3.0 of its access software for PCs - this one designed exclusively for Windows 95.

It will soon be distributed to users in a blizzard of mailed CDs, but is available for download from AOL now by modem.

The new version is not easy to distinguish from the original version 3.0, and AOL tries to make a virtue of this, boasting that the "Windows 95 version ... includes many of the same easy-to-use interface features that you already know through Windows 95."

This is a euphemism. This new version looks exactly as the original version 3.0 does, running under Windows 95.

The new version, however, is a 32-bit program, which means it can make full use of Windows 95's wider data "bus." The earlier version, written for Windows 3.1, has a 16-bit bus.

The bus is the electronic pathway along which data travels inside a computer system. The wider the bus, the faster data moves. Unfortunately, the key speed issue for an online program is not how fast data moves once it reaches your computer, it's how fast it gets there in the first place.

Since you'll still be getting data over the same phone lines using the same modem, you may not notice much difference in performance with this new software. AOL also says this new software includes a built-in edition of Microsoft's Internet Explorer World Wide Web browser. But this new built-in browser looks exactly like the old AOL browser. It may indeed be a special version of Internet Explorer, but it's not easy to tell.

In fact, the download package you receive includes a full-blown, stand-alone edition of Internet Explorer, which you can use instead of the built-in browser, if you choose.

Getting to it is not an elegant process, however. You must start the AOL software to go online. Then you start Internet Explorer, which cannot be done from inside the AOL program. You have to go outside the AOL software and boot Internet Explorer from scratch. It will then recognize and use your online connection through AOL to reach the Internet.

Internet Explorer, by the way, is a nice program, designed specifically for Windows 95. But don't get the idea it's a bargain to get it free from AOL. Microsoft also gives it away and you can download it free from Microsoft's Web site, among other places. However, if you download it from AOL, the connect time during the download is free.

It takes about an hour and 40 minutes to download at 28.8 kilobytes. It needs 50 megabytes of disk space to install. That's because the downloaded file is a condensed version that comes in the form of an executable program. You download it to your computer, then run it. As it runs, it installs the new software on your system. You can then delete the condensed program, after which AOL says it will only consume about 28 megabytes of disk space.

That's still a lot, and, what's more, it does not automatically delete the earlier version of AOL you already have. You can choose to have the new program installed in the same directory as the old, but that may well leave you with a lot of files left over from the old version mixed in with the new ones. You will have a terrible time getting rid of the old stuff then.

So the likelihood is that you will end up with two versions of AOL hogging acres of hard disk space. You will be tempted to eliminate the old one. AOL says that's OK, but recommends you keep the old one for a while to make sure the new one works properly. Be sure before you get rid of the old version to check its "download" subdirectory to see if it contains any files you want to keep.

AOL 3.0 for Windows will have installed your old configuration and sign-on files, but not the downloaded files.

Getting rid of the old version, by the way, cannot be done using the Windows 95 "Add/Remove" utility, since the old version was not written for Windows 95. You can use your favorite file manager to do the job, but the most efficient way may be to go to the DOS command line by clicking on the MS DOS Prompt icon, and then use the DOS "deltree" command to delete the old AOL directory. This single command will delete the old directory, all its subdirectories and all their contents.

T.R. Reid is Rocky Mountain bureau chief of the Washington Post. Brit Hume is a Capitol Hill correspondent for ABC News. You can reach them in care of the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St., Washington D.C. 20071-9200, or you can e-mail T.R. Reid at [e-mail] corn.corn, or Brit Hume at [e-mail].