CompuServe Messages

Jack, You're so right about Prodigy getting expensive. With the ads and graphics, it is so slow that you can easily stay connected for 30-60 hours a month, or more (at 9600 bps). At even $0.50 an hour, our household would have spent $14.95 plus $30, minimum, per month. Not a good deal! In fact, the Prodigy bulletin board surcharges will be much higher: something that reduces to $3.60/hour for 6 or more hours of monthly usage, I think. They're talking about making a bulletin board downloader available, but they have _no_ plans to drop the ads from the timed-usage areas. (!) Actually, the Prodigy execs did me a favor: I knew I was wasting time online with Prodigy, but hadn't realized that so _much_ time was getting away. And I wasn't even having fun. I was answering beginners' questions, to pay back some of the help I've received online, but Prodigy members' constant complaining gets to you after a while. Yesterday I went looking for "refugees" and found some in the Helpforum, still complaining. (Ed Giroux is an understanding sysop.) Anyway, they'll assimilate fairly fast. Many Prodigy bb users have spoken well of AOL. Many will go there, and lots will go to GEnie, which I've tried. However, GEnie is overloaded in Northern California. The system halts all the time, and you may wait 2-3 minutes for a prompt, before you can even log off. It's really hard to learn navigation, too, with the system stopped all the time. I figured it wasn't worth the trouble, and cancelled out. Lynne