Is there a way to get aol mail to forward automatically to my new gmail account?

I am not computer savvy, and I thought the correct way to do it was:

http://email.about.com/cs/aoltips/qt/et050704.htm

I thought all was well until a friend who is more savvy thought she saw some obstacles in the path:

She says that all this does is resets an AOL account so that it downloads to my Mac’s mail client MAIL (I have never used Macmail). Then I’d have to set up my MAIL account to forward to Gmail or show my replies as coming from Gmail. The only other issue is that MAIL requires me to have a mac.com email address.

So she thinks that, short of sending out an email to everyone I know saying that I’m transitioning to gmail, or setting up my AOL to show that I’m sending from gmail (not sure that I can do this in AOL, since it seems that they’re hell bent on making it difficult to get rid of their account) nothing can be done. If you know how to do it, please send step-by-step instructions.