nelson%odin.corp.sgi.com@sgi.com (Nelson Bolyard) (11/14/90)
Executive (:-) Summary: If you have and use AT&T Mail's "ACCESS"
program for the PC or MacIntosh, please write a description of how it
works, how you use it, how user-friendly it is, etc, and mail it to me
or post it to the TELECOM Digest (comp.dcom.telecom).
In article <14630@accuvax.nwu.edu> Mike Van Pelt <mvp@hsv3.uucp> wrote
about the GEnie Star*Services, and provided a wonderful description of
GEnies' program called Aladdin. Aladdin essentially allows you to
forget that GEnie is an on-line service. Instead of perceiving
yourself as logged into a computer far away, you interact with your
own personal computer, and it deals with GEnie off-line (that is to
say, behind your back, while you're not looking).
Like Mike, I want to use e-mail to converse with a distant relative.
Since I am already on the Internet, I want an e-mail service for my
relative with a mail gateway to the Internet. GEnie's Star*Services
e-mail has no such gateway (or so I have been told by one of GEnie's
e-mail operations personnel, not a customer sales rep).
So I chose AT&T Mail. $30/year, a few cents per message (I forget the
exact amount), no connect time charges, 800-number so no toll charges.
And they have a mail gateway to the Internet.
AT&T has a pair of programs that they want you to buy to use AT&T
Mail. Both are named "ACCESS", one is for the PC, one for the
MacIntosh. Each reportedly costs about $150 (just went up, used to be
about $100).
I have been trying, unsuccessfully, for about six weeks to get some
information on those programs. I have called 800-MAIL-672 about six
times, and written numerous e-mail letters to people at attmail.com.
So far, I've received three brochures, one of which has two sentences
about ACCESS, one has one paragraph, and one (actually a sheet
describing system requirements) that tells me the PC version is
actually five TSRs, which take up a total of something like 350 K
bytes (I think). One e-mail letter I got from someone at attmail.com
told me that ACCESS provides only "glass teletype" terminal emulation,
no VT-100 or other terminal emulation. So I know what it DOESN'T do,
but what DOES it do? It has fewer ADVERTISED features than any other
terminal emulation programs I can think of (like Procomm Plus) that
cost less than one third of the price of ACCESS.
Now I suppose, if its main purpose is to be like Aladdin and hide the
interaction with the central mail hub from the end-user, that it's OK
for it to not have good terminal emulation. But why should I have to
make a wild-a**ed guess about what their $150 program does before
buying it?
Evidently, AT&T has NO brochures to SELL their expensive program! The
only way to get the owners manual is to buy the product, and there's
no satisfaction-or-your-money-back no-questions-asked 30-day
guarantee. No demo version is available, and the local AT&T sales
reps don't know about ACCESS and can't demo it.
Every time I think about this, I remember something I read in an old
TELECOM Digest article about "couldn't sell drugs at a Grateful Dead
concert".
So, please, if you use this ACCESS program and are willing to play
AT&T sales rep, please tell me all about it. Or, if you're in the San
Francisco Bay area, and are willing to do a demo, please call me.
Nelson Bolyard nelson@sgi.COM {decwrl,sun}!sgi!whizzer!nelson
415-335-1919 Disclaimer: Views expressed herein do not represent the
views of my employer.
[Moderator's Note: You do *not* need those programs to use ATT Mail! I
use one of my terminals and the printer attached to it and get along
just fine. Some time ago, they tried to tell me I needed a PC to use
the mail. Whether or not the program you describe, at the price
offered is worthwhile or not is a judgment you need to make. PAT]tkevans@uunet.uu.net (Tim Evans) (11/17/90)
In <14689@accuvax.nwu.edu> nelson%odin.corp.sgi.com@sgi.com (Nelson Bolyard) writes: >Executive (:-) Summary: If you have and use AT&T Mail's "ACCESS" >program for the PC or MacIntosh, please write a description of how it >works, how you use it, how user-friendly it is, etc, and mail it to me >So I chose AT&T Mail. >AT&T has a pair of programs that they want you to buy to use AT&T >Mail. Both are named "ACCESS", one is for the PC, one for the >MacIntosh. Each reportedly costs about $150 (just went up, used to be >about $100). Missing here is the fact that ATTMail can be used non-interactively. AT&T does after all run UNIX on its systems, including the ATTMail system. If your system is a UNIX or UNIX-derived system, just establish a UUCP link to ATTMail (they will allow this) and then use your local mail agent to compose messages with UUCP-style addresses. They will be delivered just like any other UUCP mail. Morever, since ATTMail charges more for "on line" message composition than for messages "uploaded" via UUCP, you save even more money this way. PC and Mac users: don't despair. Get a PD UUCP (i.e., 'uupc' or similar agent) and connect to ATTMail as a "UNIX" system. Even if you _buy_ a DOS/MacOS UUCP-style mailer, you're still ahead of where you'd be buying ACCESS, because you can use it to talk to systems other than ATTMail. I don't thing anyone disagrees that AT&T's marketing of ATTMail is p*ss poor, but if you insist that you want to connect a "UNIX" system (even if your "UNIX" system is really a DOS system), somebody in Customer Service should be able to find somebody who knows somebody who can help you. Just don't confuse them by telling them you're using a PC or Mac. UUCP: {rutgers|ames|uunet}!mimsy!woodb!fallst!tkevans INTERNET: tkevans%fallst@wb3ffv.ampr.org Tim Evans 2201 Brookhaven Ct, Fallston, MD 21047