#I'm back
Fine; join the club, then, and answer everybody else's questions.
The key isn't just the bill; the key is to use BBS management software that
limits that bill and also allows you to manage your own time. TAPCIS is my own
choice; it logs on, downloads my EMail and all the forum messages I'm
interested in at 9600 baud, then logs off. Then, when I have the time in my
schedule, I call it up, go through them all, read the ones that interest me,
answer the ones I want, etc. Then I hit a key and it's all uploaded to the
right places. It means I can monitor a half-dozen forums and a few more
sections of same and generally do all that there's a charge for in about 3
minutes a day maybe every other day. If I need to go to a forum for specific
info that I'm not usually in, I just download the thread titles and go through
and mark the ones I'm interested in. The next time I log on, only those threads
are downloaded.
You can spend a fortune on this thing (particularly CI$, which is by far
the most expensive of the services) but you can also do more than you have time
for on the cheap.