0003209613@mcimail.com (Sandy Kyrish) (11/09/90)
I'm interested in knowing just how successful Prodigy *really* is. Anyone with informal (or formal) knowledge of these questions, I'd appreciate hearing from you ... either through this forum, or at my personal MCI Mailbox, MCI ID 320-9613. 1. Prodigy claims nearly 500,000 subscribers. What's the turnover rate? Do people "buy the yellow box", keep Prodigy for awhile, and then cut it off? And what is this 500K number really based on; boxes sold/given away, or active bill-paying subscribers? 2. Is anything besides the e-mail/BBS service really popular with subscribers? Is the shopping at home/banking at home making a dent? 3. What do you think people are really responding to with Prodigy -- the ability to access information, the ability to finally put their PC to good use, the e-mail/BBSs, or something else? 4. Do you/did you use it, and how do you/did you like it? Thanks in advance, Sandy Kyrish [Moderator's Note: I'm hearing some bad news about Prodigy lately. So 'they' say, several users recently were summarily evicted from the service after they sent email to other users criticizing the service's plan to begin charging for 'excessive' amounts of email. Does anyone have any details on this? PAT]
lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David Lemson) (11/10/90)
0003209613@mcimail.com (Sandy Kyrish) writes: >I'm interested in knowing just how successful Prodigy *really* is. >1. Prodigy claims nearly 500,000 subscribers. What's the turnover >rate? Do people "buy the yellow box", keep Prodigy for awhile, and >then cut it off? And what is this 500K number really based on; boxes >sold/given away, or active bill-paying subscribers? First off, I had Prodigy for about five months ending in August, 1990. So, I haven't been on in a few months. I have kept track of it in things like alt.bbs, though. I get the impression that the 500,000 is just a bit of an exaggeration, or possibly a prediction that was supposed to have come true by now, but hasn't. >2. Is anything besides the e-mail/BBS service really popular with >subscribers? Is the shopping at home/banking at home making a dent? I went to the home banking service, and read that in my area (St. Louis at the time), there was only two banks that would service me. They were nationwide services. If you bank with IBM Credit Union (you have to be an IBM employee), I think there's no service charge. Most of the other banks will charge you. It's just not worth it to me. My main banking is done with a mutual fund management corp., and they have an 800 number with computerized auto-attendant that can do about anything I want. As for the E-mail, it was pretty good. It was quite cheap for the ability to send mail to so many people. Problems: You have to move the cursor down to "PgDn" to make a new screen or to scroll to the new screen. "Screens" are about 15 rows by 60 cols., and take FOREVER to scroll, even at 2400 bps. I asked them MANY times if they would ever install MNP on their modems. "Duhh, what's MNP? We already have a PROPRIETARY ERROR CORRECTION SCHEME! We can't tell you anything about it!!!" This was to Harold Goldes, the so-called "Technical head of Prodigy". After I explained what MNP was, and they saw that it would require capital outlay. NO WAY would they spend more money so that we would have greater speed. Problem now: in a few months, they are going to start charging something like $.25 per E-mail message over about 30 per month. Gag. Advice: Stick with Internet. Prodigy's messages have a four or five screen limit, too. Grocery services were supposed to be good. In STL, we had Schnuck's, and the prices were exactly the same as the shelf price, plus a $8 flat fee for pick-up (they're ready for you ahead of time) or about $15 for delivery. A good deal for someone who can't get out, and they do carry several thousand items on-line, and will even accept coupons on delivery orders. >3. What do you think people are really responding to with Prodigy -- >the ability to access information, the ability to finally put their PC >to good use, the e-mail/BBSs, or something else? It's mainly people who don't know why they ever bought that $500 Hayes Smartmodem 1200 so many years ago. It's for people who don't know that BBSs provide almost the same thing for much cheaper. (Well, not the SAME, but at least they don't censor your messages on BBSs that much.) >4. Do you/did you use it, and how do you/did you like it? Yes, I used it when I was writing to four people at once each day. If they made me pay extra for all that, I doubt I'd use it. Now that I have Internet and can write without a monthly charge, I prefer that. >[Moderator's Note: I'm hearing some bad news about Prodigy lately. So >'they' say, several users recently were summarily evicted from the >service after they sent email to other users criticizing the service's >plan to begin charging for 'excessive' amounts of email. Does anyone >have any details on this? PAT] I've heard the same thing. People posted "public" messages asking people to boycott the Prodigy advertisers! (Each Prodigy screen features an advertisement for an on-line store or special feature, in case you didn't know -- and this adds to the VERY SLOW service) So, Prodigy kicked about three or four accounts off. The executive interviewed said, "Yeah, we did it, they went after our advertisers, and we don't stand for that." Make up your own minds. David E. Lemson UofI Computing Svcs Student Consultant Internet : lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu University of Illinois, Urbana
glenn@rigel.econ.uga.edu (Glenn F. Leavell) (11/10/90)
In article <14478@accuvax.nwu.edu> 0003209613@mcimail.com (Sandy Kyrish) writes: >I'm interested in knowing just how successful Prodigy *really* is. [ stuff deleted ] >[Moderator's Note: I'm hearing some bad news about Prodigy lately. So >'they' say, several users recently were summarily evicted from the >service after they sent email to other users criticizing the service's >plan to begin charging for 'excessive' amounts of email. Does anyone >have any details on this? PAT] I too have read this information, but, alas, I did not save the source, and I don't remember what the source was. So, I will try to remember a few things about what I read. A group of Prodigy users recently tried to form a boycott of all Prodigy advertisers (Prodigy is cheaper than services like CompuServe becuase they run ads at the bottom of the screen). This boycott was in response to a recent Prodigy rate increase, particularly a plan to begin charging for e-mail messages that exceeded some limit X per household. This group of boycotting users began sending e-mail to all subscribers trying to rally converts to their cause. Prodigy likened this mass mailing to "junk mail" and eventually removed the instigators from the system. I understand that Prodigy now has a rule that the subject of the rate increase and boycott are not to be mentioned in any mailings or postings on the system, and that any messages that do mention them will be returned to the sender. Once again, I must state that I don't have the source of this information. I do not guarantee any of this information. Does anyone else have any corrections, clarifications, or additions? If much of this is true, it raises some possibly interesting questions: If Prodigy is returning messages to the sender based on content, does this mean that they are reading all messages sent on the system? Is this "right"? Is this the same as censorship? Becuase Prodigy is a private service, are they allowed to censor non-offensive material? But, they are using a common-carrier (the phone) as their only access method. Does this have any bearing on the situation? Glenn F. Leavell glenn@rigel.econ.uga.edu 404-542-3488 Systems Administrator University of Georgia Economics Department. 147 Brooks Hall. Athens, GA 30602 [Moderator's Note: Having telco as the transport mechanism would not change things either way: after all, telco is not the one reviewing and/or deleting mail. Whether or not Prodigy is a common carrier remains to be seen. PAT]
adamg@world.std.com (Adam M Gaffin) (11/10/90)
Tis true that a number of Prodigy users have been kicked off -- I've talked to three of 15 now. The company claims they were harassing other users and (gasp!) advertisers by sending out increasingly obnoxious e-mail messages by the bushel. The users, organized into something called the Coordinated Defense Campaign, say they were only letting people know about the impending e-mail charges (25 cents per message above a monthly free maximum of 30) and that they did not send to anybody who didn't want to hear from them. I've written about this, so if anybody wants copies of the article, let me know. Adam Gaffin Middlesex News, Framingham, Mass. adamg@world.std.com Voice: (508) 626-3968 Fred the Middlesex News Computer: (508) 872-8461. [Moderator's Note: Adam, it has been awhile since we ran one of your columns from the News here in the Digest, so by all means send along your article and we will post it here. PAT]
mcglk@bailey.cpac.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen) (11/11/90)
In article <14478@accuvax.nwu.edu> 0003209613@mcimail.com (Sandy Kyrish) asks: | I'm interested in knowing just how successful Prodigy *really* is. [...] | 1. Prodigy claims nearly 500,000 subscribers. What's the turnover rate? Do | people "buy the yellow box", keep Prodigy for awhile, and then cut it off? | And what is this 500K number really based on; boxes sold/given away, or | active bill-paying subscribers? Personally, I suspect that the number of *active* users numbers less than a quarter of that. Whoever's sending out Prodigy's mail tends toward the redundant, to put it nicely. I'm still receiving stuff from them, after having cancelled several months ago. Heck, they even billed me for four months after I had cancelled (no, I didn't pay them for those four months). Duplicate that sort of behavior a few thousand times, and you have oodles more people that are being charged for your services. | 2. Is anything besides the e-mail/BBS service really popular with | subscribers? Is the shopping at home/banking at home making a dent? No idea. The E-mail aspect wasn't terribly useful to me, but then, even after about six scans of areas where I knew people, I hadn't seen a single person I knew or wanted to contact. Perhaps that's changed now, but ... | 3. What do you think people are really responding to with Prodigy -- the | ability to access information, the ability to finally put their PC to good | use, the e-mail/BBSs, or something else? The advertisements. On the television, it looks pretty good -- spiffy, colorful, whizbang, and fast. In person: | 4. Do you/did you use it, and how do you/did you like it? Yep, I did use it, for a few months. The first thing that struck me was that it was sure awfully slow. Configuration was easy enough, but the graphics were painfully slow, and the characters flowed across the screen at a speed slightly better than a 300bps modem (from a 2400bps connection). The characters were big, which meant that it filled up a screen faster than your average 80x24 screen, but I basically read along with the text as it was printed, and then had to wait for it to accept my input and wait for it to think about the next page. The menus were poorly organized. There was no way to get a simple list of keywords downloaded. Execution -- I can't stress this enough -- was really, really slow. And with EVERY SINGLE SCREEN, it took up some more time and space to barrage me with yet *another* advertisement. When I heard that any public posting made on Prodigy was filtered by the staff, that was just another point against it. The only semi-useful thing I got out of it was trying to navigate EASY SABRE to see if I could reserve an airline ticket. Again, here, the menus were poorly organized, frequently *almost* redundant (to wit, two menus allowed you to see *exactly* the same information, except for one little item -- I had to abort the reservation process and go off to inspect the flight number again), and in general, barely useful. The vast majority of the board is an electronic advertisement. The usefulness of the news services was amazingly limited (I could have gotten the same thing on television with much better graphics, more detail, and at higher speed), the games were ... well, mediocre ... and there was no way to just simply download a file. I would have killed by the end of it to be able to dial in with Kermit, and just see ASCII characters, but no ceegar. USENET. Can't touch that. As I said, their billing department doesn't seem to be on its toes, either. | [Moderator's Note: I'm hearing some bad news about Prodigy lately. I heard the same thing from a different source that currently uses Prodigy, if that helps. :) Still, it wouldn't surprise me -- Prodigy seems to really like being in control. Ken McGlothlen mcglk@cpac.washington.edu mcglk@cpac.bitnet
pj@oxy.edu (Paul Jonathan Estalilla Go) (11/11/90)
I got my Prodigy start-up kit for free as a promo offer from Prodigy, and I am now in the one month "trial" period. (1) Prodigy is charging me $12.95/month + tax. Is this a new rate (as the LA Times article on Prodigy users says that the rate used to be $9.95/mo.)??? (2) My main use for Prodigy is to get stock quotes. Although their quotes are loooong delayed, they are better than waiting for tomorrow's newspaper. (3) I am still debating whether to stay with Prodigy or not; I have a Macintosh SE, and (a) it is SLOW; (b) I cannot take advantage of color; (c) AOL has a much better user interface, albeit the per hour charges. (4) I am very disappointed in Prodigy. Their databases do not give me the information I need, only traces here and there, and it is very hard to navigate through the thing!!! AOL's news reporting was much better, in my opinion. Paul Jonathan E. Go
tad@ssc.UUCP (Tad Cook) (11/11/90)
In article <14478@accuvax.nwu.edu>, TELECOM Moderator notes: > [Moderator's Note: I'm hearing some bad news about Prodigy lately. So > 'they' say, several users recently were summarily evicted from the > service after they sent email to other users criticizing the service's > plan to begin charging for 'excessive' amounts of email. Does anyone > have any details on this? PAT] The {Wall Street Journal} has had several articles concerning Prodigy recently. Apparently there was an outcry when the "moderators" at Prodigy started deleting postings on controversial topics. They said it was a "family" type service, and I imagine they wanted to avoid the kind of flamewars that have developed elsewhere. So when the deletions were criticized, their response was that users could still email whatever they wanted to each other. Of course, this is not the same as posting to a public forum. At the time they announced that, there were no email charges. Then recently they started charging for email. When a number of people started questioning this, they found themselves cut off from the network. It should be interesting to see how this develops. Remember that when you post to a Prodigy, it may SEEM like a public forum ... but it is actually controlled by IBM and Sears. Tad Cook Seattle, WA Packet: KT7H @ N7HFZ.WA.USA.NA Phone: 206/527-4089 MCI Mail: 3288544 Telex: 6503288544 MCI UW USENET:...uw-beaver!sumax!amc-gw!ssc!tad or, tad@ssc.UUCP
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (11/12/90)
Today's {SJ Mercury} had a scathing editorial on Prodigy and also
included a concise cronology of events leading up to the latest
fracus.
Some time back, the service had a version of "newsgroups". There arose
some spirited discussions and debates between religious
fundamentalists and gay people. You know, the stuff that you see
debated ad nauseum on TV. The Prodigy czars decided that this would be
offensive to their reference "little old lady from Pasadena" and
pulled the plug on the discussion group.
The enterprizing users discovered a way around this and a way to keep
the discussion away from the Prodigy censors. They formed "mailing
lists" (a la TELECOM Digest) using the e-mail service of the system.
When the Prodigy dweebs discovered this, they broke their "flat rate
promise" and announced the charging of $0.25 for each message over
thirty in any given month. Conveniently, this would only affect the
"mailing list" people.
When the mailing lists started buzzing with discussion of this latest
outrage, the Prodigy morons started pulling the plug on users. Users
hinted that a boycott of Prodigy advertisers might be in order, and
things really got nasty. "We're not going to post something designed
to destroy our business." Users who mentioned "boycott" got their
accounts pulled.
Prodigy gestapo have repeatedly said that the service is a private
business. It is their toy and they will play with it any way they
like. Apparently, they have decided that it is to be an online
shopping service and nothing else. And from what I've read, it is
inferior to simply using a catalog's 800 number (as least it's more
expensive, if not slower).
If this is "what the PC was invented for", then you can take PCs
and...
I have a question: is it true that the Prodigy interface doesn't allow
any of the material that comes in online to be printed or saved as
files? If this is the case, then what ever benefits over and above an
online "shopping channel" the system may possess would be pretty well
negated.
I ask this after having just seen a Prodigy commercial that touts an
online encyclopedia. If you can't print anything, then I would assume
that you would have to have an awfully good memory or be able to write
fast. Is it all as bogus as it appears? Do you "really gotta get this
thing"?
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395
john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !akcs@ddsw1.mcs.com (BBS Public Access) (11/12/90)
There is a lot of discussion on the Well (San Francisco BBS) concerning Prodigy. Much flaming, but some informed commentary as well. Speculation has it the published subscription numbers (500,000) are bogus. One "subscription" may mean several family ID's - all of which are included in the 500,000 figure even though they may be inactive or fictional. Prodigy users who cancelled their subscriptions and then returned months later report their old IDs are still on the directory. This suggests that cancelled subscriptions are still counted in the 500,000. The current e-mail problem at Prodigy is related to their past problems with controversial message boards. Some months ago, Prodigy removed several controversial message boards that were generating flames. This was done presumably to avoid offending advertisers and preserve the "family" image. Users of the cancelled boards were outraged, but they apparently found a work-around with e-mail. Result: specialty mailing lists flourished and e-mail traffic exploded. Some of the people who were coordinating the mailing lists were sending thousands of e-mail messages every day. This created another problem for Prodigy, which responded by charging $.25 per e-mail message after the first 30 messages in a month. This is likely to put the kibosh on the mailing lists. My take on this is that advertising and interactive communications don't mix - if "interactive" means user-to-user interaction. Prodigy never had that sort of interaction in mind, though.
ehopper@ehpcb.wlk.com (Ed Hopper) (11/12/90)
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: > I have a question: is it true that the Prodigy interface doesn't allow > any of the material that comes in online to be printed or saved as > files? If this is the case, then what ever benefits over and above an > online "shopping channel" the system may possess would be pretty well > negated. > I ask this after having just seen a Prodigy commercial that touts an > online encyclopedia. If you can't print anything, then I would assume > that you would have to have an awfully good memory or be able to write > fast. Is it all as bogus as it appears? Do you "really gotta get this > thing"? I tried Prodigy during its intro to Houston. True to the spirit (and a mean spirit it is) of Prodigy, you can print what "they" want you to print. At the bottom of each screen are several option buttons. If the prodigy.gods decided that you should be able to retrieve information, your airline schedule on SAABRE, for example, a "print" button appears, you can select that option and print the screen (as ASCII text). An MS-DOS print screen command didn't work, I believe. But then, what did you expect from IBM? After getting disgusted with Prodigy and still wanting a good source of wire service news and SAABRE access, I signed up with the online service of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, StarText. Also $9.95 a month, but you pay toll. Of course, if you're in Seattle, etc. the local news in Fort Worth is not of much interest. It was very useful, however, during the Panama invasion to dial up StarText and capture and print out the latest AP story. I'd post it on the (cork) bulletin board at work as they came in. I wish more papers did this sort of thing. Ed Hopper
tnixon@uunet.uu.net (Toby Nixon) (11/13/90)
In article <14532@accuvax.nwu.edu>, glenn@rigel.econ.uga.edu (Glenn F. Leavell) writes: > If much of this is true, it raises some possibly interesting > questions: If Prodigy is returning messages to the sender based on > content, does this mean that they are reading all messages sent on the > system? Is this "right"? Is this the same as censorship? Becuase > Prodigy is a private service, are they allowed to censor non-offensive > material? But, they are using a common-carrier (the phone) as their > only access method. Does this have any bearing on the situation? I am not speaking for Hayes here! Prodigy doesn't read mail sent directly from one subscriber to another. However, all forums/newsgroups/SIGs/(whatever they're called on Prodigy) are MODERATED, just like comp.dcom.telecom, and the moderator can reject any message they deem to be inappropriate. What happened in this case is that these folks' messages inciting a boycott were getting rejected by the moderators, so they (the agitators) started mass mailing messages to other users individually. When the recipients of these messages complained to Prodigy management, the senders were expelled. It's censorship, yes, but because it's not done by the government it is completely legal. There's no law against private censorship in this country; you don't have unrestricted rights to newspapers, radio, TV, etc. Using the phone as an access method doesn't change this at all; the phone company isn't doing the censoring. I think that since Prodigy moderates their forums/SIGs, they accept responsibility for the content. That puts them outside the realm of being a common carrier -- they shouldn't receive the protections a common carrier receives, but they also aren't required to carry anything regardless of content. Prodigy, after all, isn't a regulated monopoly with exclusive right to serve a particular territory, like your local exchange carrier. You CAN choose to use other services. As for their kicking people off the system for broadcasting individual messages: if their rules say you can't do that, then they're within their rights to terminate service. Compuserve has strict rules against employees of other information services recruiting users via Compuserve messages, too, and they'd probably squelch any public criticism that was as repetative and harrassing as (alledgedly) were these Prodigy messages. All those angry ex-Prodigy subscribers are perfectly welcome to move their business to Internet, FidoNet, Compuserve, Genie, or just about anyplace else. _I_ did, as soon as I got the first bill from Prodigy following the free introductory period. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-449-8791 Telex 151243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 USA | Internet hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net
graff@mlpvm2.iinus1.ibm.com (Michael Graff) (11/13/90)
After reading the Prodigy items in Digest issues 805 and 809, I think I'll take a stab at "this Prodigy thing." I'm an IBMer and a Prodigy subscriber, but I don't speak for either IBM or Prodigy. Sandy Kyrish asks where the claim of 500,000 subscribers comes from. My understanding is that it is the number of active userids. Prodigy charges a monthly rate per "household" which allows as many as six separate userids (one for Dad, one for Mom, and so on). So, not all of those 500,000 subscribers are paying. And some of them probably don't log on very often. But from Prodigy's point of view, it doesn't really matter who's paying and who isn't. They make their money by selling the ads that take up the bottom quarter of the screen. There's no charge for connect time. What are people responding to with Prodigy? For one thing, it's accessible. It's very easy to learn and get around. There are no cryptic commands as on the traditional online services like Compuserve. There's no charge for connect time, so there's no pressure to keep your usage down. The graphics are cute and fun. David Lemson mentions MNP. I don't think it would make any difference. Since Prodigy already has its own compression and correction schemes, adding another one wouldn't help. Glenn F. Leavell asks about Prodigy screening message content. Keep in mind that there are two kinds of messages on Prodigy. There are private messages that you send to an individual (email), and there are public messages that you post on Prodigy's bulletin boards. Prodigy screens the bulletins, but as far as I know, they leave the private mail alone. The exception on the private mail is if a subscriber complains about private mail received from somebody else, then Prodigy will get involved. Prodigy gets a lot of flap for screening messages on the bulletin boards, but to me it seems no different from Patrick screening messages for TELECOM. Ken McGlothlen talks about Prodigy's slow speed. Prodigy's new software is noticeably faster than the previous version. Also, your PC hardware makes a big difference, especially processor speed. Finally, perception has a lot to do with it. I find it generally reasonable on a fast XT clone. Also, it's easy to get a list of all the JUMPwords. If you JUMP INDEX, there is an option on that screen to print them all. As for navigation, I find it generally easy to get around. Eaasy Sabre (that's the correct spelling - it's run by American Airlines) used to be particularly clumsy, but they improved it a while back. I use it to check schedules, but I prefer to buy my tickets from a travel agent. The navigation of the bulletin boards is now in its third version, much better than before, but still a long way to go. Otherwise, most of the service is very easy to get around. Adam M. Gaffin talks about the person who sends 1500 email messages. I dare say, if he tried that on MCI Mail or Compuserve, he would go broke very fast. Tad Cook talks about how Prodigy is controlled by IBM and Sears. I really don't know how much actual control IBM or Sears puts on Prodigy. I've heard plenty of IBMers complaining about how Prodigy's handling of the email and censorship flaps is making IBM look bad, and IBM doesn't seem to be doing much to either distance itself or get Prodigy to straighten up. In any case, IBM's and Sears' control of Prodigy is probably less than the public perception. John Higdon asks about printing or saving information from Prodigy. Prodigy supports printing in some, but not all, areas of the service. It's a lot better now than it used to be. Prodigy doesn't directly support saving information to a file, but there are plenty of utilities around that can redirect print output to a file. I use one and it works well. As for the online encyclopedia, I understand that it's the same one used on PC-Link, GEnie, and other services. I've looked up a few things in it and found it to be pretty decent. With a print redirection utility, I have saved some items to disk. Jeff Sicherman mentions GEnie's new Star Services. Unlimited text email *is* included in the $4.95 monthly rate, and a lot of the heavy email users on Prodigy are jumping over to GEnie. Ironically, GEnie announced Star Services about the same time that Prodigy announced its new email charge. Michael Graff
mvp@hsv3.uucp (Mike Van Pelt) (11/13/90)
I've got Prodigy; mostly because my sister-in-law in Denver has it, and I save more than $10/mo in phone bills for conversations between her and my wife. With the new charges, that may no longer be the case. The new charge of $ .25/message over 30 per month starts in January. This is made worse by the fact that email is limited to 48 lines, at about 40 characters per line. Yecch. Ginny and Barb typically send four or five letters per session to get everything said that they want to say. Then, whoever's receiving the message has to go through all manner of contortions to get the messages in chronological order. Mail is in your mailbox in "Last in, first out" order, and Prodigy provides a "NEXT MAIL" button, but no "PREVIOUS MAIL", so you have to go all the way back to the mail menu and manually select the previous message. I've glanced at a couple of the bulletin boards, but it is so *G*R*O*T*E*S*Q*U*E*L*Y* *P*A*I*N*F*U*L*L*Y* *S*L*O*W* that I haven't looked at them in months. I joined a mailing list at one point, but quickly gave that up. Again, it's **SLOW**, and very inflexible. Everyone on the mailing list has to create a "mailing list" alias specifying everyone on the list. And again, you can not easily read mail in chronological order. The $ .25/message charge doesn't only affect mailing lists; my sister-in-law sends several messages per day to various "modem pals." As for printing, you can print screens -- if, and only if, Prodigy saw fit to equip that screen with a "PRINT" button, or enabled the "COPY" function on the Jump Screen. You can print out your stock quotes, and the encyclopedia entries are printable. You can not save to disk with the Prodigy software, but there are shareware utilities that get around this. I sometimes run a TSR that diverts all print into a file, which works if the screens you're interested in are printable. There is also a utility that will print an "unprintable" screen, but I haven't used it. In general, if you're technically sophisticated enough to be reading TELECOM Digest, then you'll find that Prodigy is an insult to your intelligence. It resembles most of all those TeleText things in the airports. So, I'm trying to convince my in-laws to get a GEnie account or a Unix EMAIL account. If and when I'm sucessful, the Prodigy account goes. On the plus side, Ginny would never touch the computer until we got Prodigy. Now she's playing games on the PC, and even using Microsoft Word. Mike Van Pelt Headland Technology/Video 7 ...ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp
randyd@uunet.uu.net (11/14/90)
I use Prodigy three to five times a week. I use it almost exclusively for stock quotes and for doing stock trades. I think the service is pretty primative, especially the mail servcies. The potential is there, but their execution is stone-age. The number of useful things you can do are very limited (for instance, the news part is a complete waste. You have to scan the news in the order they provide. There is no capability to scan headlines and pick the stories you're interested in, much less search-by-keyword capabilities.) The only thing that keeps me using Prodigy is that the fee is fixed. This is what I really respond to. Getting stock quotes/doing stock trades is much cheaper via Prodigy than via something like Dow Jones News Retrival (which I also subscribe to). Randy Day (Opinions expressed here are mine and mine only. They are not a reflection of my employer's opinion.)
CRW@icf.hrb.com (Craig R. Watkins) (11/15/90)
In article <14534@accuvax.nwu.edu>, mcglk@bailey.cpac.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen) writes: > The first thing that struck me was that it was sure awfully slow. > Configuration was easy enough, but the graphics were painfully slow, > and the characters flowed across the screen at a speed slightly better > than a 300bps modem (from a 2400bps connection). I've used Prodigy on a Mac, a couple different PC's, and I've even run it on my VAXstation (under SoftPC). While I was running it on a 386SX, I found I could speed it up a decent amount by calling at 9600 baud. There's a SCRIPT.R file on your disk for connecting to Tymnet at 9600. You have to find a 9600 baud Tymnet number to tell Prodigy to use along with type "R." You also will have to hand-edit some configuration file(s) to tell Prodigy to use 9600 baud since the only menu selections are 1200 and 2400. I don't remember what the file(s) were, but it wasn't hard although it did require some guesswork -- try switching the setup between 1200 and 2400 and see what changes. (The SCRIPT.R file is on the Mac disk, too, but I didn't try that.) I had a few people at "Ask Prodigy" tell me 9600 baud usage was not possible in direct reply to mail that I sent saying that I was using it at that very moment! I also had one person there tell me to STOP using it. When I pursued the question of what I would do if I only had a 9600 baud modem, someone else said I could continue to use it, but it wasn't supported. I left it at that. The bottom line is that if you are a Prodigy user, depending on your platform, 9600 may help (it was definitely worthwhile on a 386SX). As for the usefulness of the service: I can certainly see that it could be a good deal (with "flat" rate service) for people that are interested in the services that are offered. Me? I canceled. As an interesting sidenote -- earlier this week I was attending a a PREPnet (Pennsylvania's regional branch of the Internet) meeting in Philly and saw a Prodigy machine set up in the lobby of the Holiday Inn at 18th & Market. One could just walk up and use it -- I actually checked weather for the drive home. I was amused to note that the PC was by AT&T and not IBM! Craig R. Watkins Internet: CRW@ICF.HRB.COM HRB Systems, Inc. Bitnet: CRW%HRB@PSUECL.Bitnet +1 814 238-4311 UUCP: ...!psuvax1!hrbicf!crw