peter@uunet.uu.net (06/27/89)
Would anyone care to give me some feedback on the relative merits of MCI Mail and AT&T Mail? I'd like to be able to send FAXes to my father in Australia, and the two companies charge about the same amount for the service. I've used MCI Mail in the past and wasn't overly fond of the user interface back then, but my brief examination of AT&T Mail didn't lead me to believe it'd be any better. Has MCI got any better? What other facilities do they have that might help me make a decision? --- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.
avr@mtgzx.att.com (a.v.reed) (06/29/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0214m06@vector.dallas.tx.us>, ficc!peter@uunet.uu.net writes: > Would anyone care to give me some feedback on the relative merits of MCI > Mail and AT&T Mail? I'd like to be able to send FAXes to my father in > Australia, and the two companies charge about the same amount for the > service. I've used MCI Mail in the past and wasn't overly fond of the user > interface back then, but my brief examination of AT&T Mail didn't lead me > to believe it'd be any better. I can't comment on the comparison (and since I work for AT&T you probably would be justified in discounting any comaprisons I made anyway), but I'd like to point out that the "user interface" of AT&T Mail is just a "backup" kind of capability - it's there so you can still get to your mail if your UNIX(r) system is down. For normal use, you register your machine with AT&T Mail (no need to buy any special software if you are running UNIX with UUCP), and then use your favorite UNIX mailer to send mail to an AT&T Mail address, such as attmail!adamreed/paper for a hardcopy letter (delivered via USPS) to yours truly. There is also a special address, attmail!dispatcher, for mail to people (or FAX machines etc) without registered AT&T Mail addresses. For example, I use the following sh script to send nroff -mm letters via FAX: NUMBER=$1;ATTENTION=$2;shift;shift (echo "To: attmail!fax!$NUMBER(/$ATTENTION)";\ nroff -mm -rL60 -rW65 $@ | col -bx)|\ /bin/mail attmail!dispatcher I can't comment on how you would do this with MCI Mail, but if I were choosing an electronic mail service my key question would be, "can I use it, transparently, from my usual UNIX system, with mailers and tools I already know?". Could someone comment on how MCI Mail, and other commercial E-Mail services, compare in this regard? Adam Reed (Adam_V_Reed@att.com, attmail!adamreed)
johnl@harvard.harvard.edu (John R. Levine) (06/30/89)
Since someone commented on AT&T Mail, here's my two cents about MCI Mail.
MCI recently changed their pricing for the better -- so-called advanced
service which gets you such distinctly unadvanced features as forwarding
messages used to cost extra but now is the standard interface. Unlike AT&T
mail it is not integrated with uucp mail (though there is an undocumented
gateway to the Internet -- if you have an MCI Mail account try sending
something to the EMS "internet" with the internet address as the mailbox.)
There are nice interface programs for IBM PCs (Lotus Express) and Macs
(Dow Jones Desktop Express) which let you do your message sending and reading
on your desktop machine. Email messages are 75 cents apiece (up to 3K
characters) or they have a deal where you get up to 40 email and fax
messages a month for a flat rate of 10 dollars. Connect time is always free
and they have nationwide 800 numbers.
As far as faxes (faxen?) and telexes go, MCI does a good job of both. MCI
owns Western Union International, which is one of the major international
telex carriers, and has a good two-way gateway to telex. They say that sending
an international telex via MCI mail is cheaper than any other way and I've
no reason to doubt them. Each MCI mailbox has an associated telex number;
telex users can call that number and send a telex and it shows up as a message
in your mailbox. This really works, and I routinely use it to send and
receive telexes to and from Europe. MCI is also a telephone company, so they
also make it cheap and easy to send faxes, by treating "fax" as a fake
electronic mail system to which they have a gateway. (They also have gateways
to Compuserve and a lot of corporate Email systems.) You can only send text
faxes, and can't receive them at all. On the other hand, what do you want for
25 cents apiece?
Another facility that is of use is their paper mail. You can have any message
run off on a laser printer and mailed; it looks very nice. They have printers
in Belgium and Australia so that mail to Europe and the South Pacific usually
arrives in a day or two, much faster and cheaper than express mail. If you
use Desktop Express you can apparently send quickdraw graphics in your paper
messages, though I haven't tried it.
--
John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869
{ bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something
Massachusetts has 64 licensed drivers who are over 100 years old. -The Globepeter@uunet.uu.net (06/30/89)
Thanks to everyone who's sent me mail on the subject. I suppose I should clarify one thing... I'm looking for a personal account and I don't have a UNIX system at home, so the ability to send mail from your UNIX box is unfortunately not a factor. Is it possible to send UUCP mail from Usenet to AT&T Mail accounts? Is there any other advantage to the link between AT&T Mail and Usenet? --- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.
eric@ists.ists.ca (Eric M. Carroll) (07/04/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0218m06@vector.dallas.tx.us> avr@mtgzx.att.com (a.v. reed) writes: >... then use your favorite UNIX mailer to send mail to an AT&T >Mail address, such as attmail!adamreed/paper for a hardcopy letter >(delivered via USPS) to yours truly. There is also a special >address, attmail!dispatcher, for mail to people (or FAX machines >etc) without registered AT&T Mail addresses. This touches on an area that I am now actively investigating for my organization. Namely, I would like to gateway much of my email traffic into things like Bell Canada's Envoy, Canada Post's paper mail service and FAX. I have found no commercial rfc822 compliant gateways for either of these as yet. I had not investigated attmail as it was indicated to me that it was a US only service. Does anyone know of FAX boards that are mungable into dealing with Internet Mail? Outgoing is the priority, but incoming would be great too. How about commercial gateways that can deal with *Canadian* email traffic? (ie they don't requite huge long distance bills and know about Envoy) Contact addresses and phone numbers would be most welcome. ---- Eric Carroll eric@ists.ists.ca Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science uunet!attcan!ists!eric