newsbytes@clarinet.com (02/04/90)
telecommunications service From: Prodigy, 445 Hamilton Avenue, White Plains, NY 10601, 1-800-822-6922 Price: $49.95 for start-up kit, but it has been given away free via ads in Mac magazines and through user groups. PUMA Rating: 2.5 on a scale of 1=lowest to 4=highest Reviewed for Newsbytes by: Linda Joan Kaplan, 1/28/90 Summary: Prodigy software is the only software you can use to access this telecom service. It disables many of the important components of the Mac interface, while it provides a product that is often entertaining and stimulating on line. ====== REVIEW ====== The Prodigy telecom service offers hundreds of interesting areas to explore, but requires the use of a special telecommunication program which has limitations. The Prodigy telecommunications software for the Mac is bug-ridden and counter to the Mac interface in many crucial ways. There is no support for desk accessories, no support for FKeys, no support for any INITs such as those that provide separate menus like the spell- checkers or launch utilities like On Cue. There is no MultiFinder support. When you use Prodigy you can't access anything else on your computer by any means and you must return to Finder when you quit. If you need a phone number or an address when you're on line with Prodigy, that's just too bad. You have to quit the service to find it or learn to live without your computerized reference material. Nothing you have on disk is available to you when you're on line on Prodigy. You can't pre-prepare messages for upload to Prodigy. You're forced to type online, and to interact online. When you are in the process of writing messages as responses, you can not simultaneously view the message to which you're responding. There is no window support on Prodigy. This makes providing a careful response to a complex message difficult. The only way around this, a cumbersome one, is to print the message to which you're responding, then read it as you write your response. In many areas of Prodigy you can't print at all. You can never save to disk on Prodigy and you can often not print. You cannot print the columns, reviews, stories, games, and many over things you'd like to archive. As a result, much of the information you are happy to find on Prodigy is lost. I'm told there is a workaround by using GLUE to print to disk. I don't know how well it works, but requiring users to devise workarounds to save to disk is surely a poor way to run a telecommunication service. There's no downloading from or uploading to Prodigy, so no file transfers can be done. One alluring concession to the Mac interface is that you can mouse through the menus on Prodigy, but this method of navigation online doesn't operate as efficiently as the keyboard commands. Via the keyboard, you can quickly TAB through the menu fields, and then hit the RETURN or ENTER key to register your command. The Prodigy software responds so much more sluggishly to mouse commands, that many opt to use the keyboard instead. Nevertheless, there is an interactive quality to Prodigy represented by this feature and it is significant. Many areas on Prodigy are genuinely interactive and these areas, along with the stunning color graphics, are a lot of fun. Prodigy is pretty to look at, especially in color, but Prodigy software won't work in color on the Mac IIci. Prodigy is supposed to be a service for shopping, but I found it easy to ignore the ads for the most part and I've bought only postage stamps through Prodigy so far. Will they revoke my membership? Probably not. The most important advantage of Prodigy is that it's a cheap way to introduce your family to telecommunications. Up to five family members may share the same ID number (with just a letter suffix to distinguish between the members). Children can log on and can play games on Prodigy to their hearts' content. In addition, they can learn the basics of how to post messages, and find their way around a telecommunications system. This is a great bargain for only $10 a month, given that all other national and international services charge for each minute of online time. Experts are paid to write regular, brief, columns and as part of their job, maintain a presence on the bulletin board areas. The Mac expert is Steve Rosenthal, who provides three, often informative, weekly columns. Sadly, when you find some good information in one of his columns, you can't save it to disk and you can't print it out. You are reduced to scribbling on a piece of paper. When I joined Prodigy I saw that multitudes of complaints about the software were directed to Steve Rosenthal (because of his Expert status) in the Mac Software area. Steve was not permitted to respond to questions about the Prodigy service or software. He was required to direct all such inquiries to a special support area. My perusal of that area revealed apparent chaos. Hundreds of complaints and only a fraction seemed to result in responses. The Prodigy management did try to provide informative responses, but there was such a flood of questions at the time I looked at it, they couldn't keep up. Some of the special areas are innovative. There was a wonderfully awful science fiction novel online with 50 daily installments. Many people order home-delivered groceries via Prodigy. The forum areas contain more than the official experts. The subscribers are of a high quality and the level of discussion is often stimulating. You can print posted messages in the forums, even though you can't save them to disk. The level of discussion and help with regard to the Mac, writing, sci fi, movies (those are the areas I've used) is probably equivalent to that on any of the national telecom services. But the software interface on the message bases is slow and awkward, even though there are some powerful aspects to it as well. You can preselect messages to be read by date, and can include the original message to which there may be responses. Since you can't read backward on the service to get a prior messages, the retrieval structure itself has some uniquely positive aspects. But you need a fast Mac and a fast modem to not be totally bogged down in molasses when you're reading the message bases. The speed of the Prodigy service is acceptable on a Mac with an 030 processor, lots of RAM, and a 2400 baud modem. For an experienced telecommunicator, it's just too slow on a Mac Plus or at 1200 baud. But the speed isn't as important to people who are new to telecommunications, so for beginners, Prodigy is a great place to practice, and a great place to hang out. Features are available there that are very costly on other services, such as airline info, booking and stock market quotes. One aspect that inhibits a free-flow of discussion on Prodigy is that all public messages are read by Prodigy staff before posting, are held up for many hours and then posted in bulk. During this review process, many messages are rejected for public posting. They are returned to sender via private mail, with a cover letter that doesn't explain which rule has been broken. The rules for acceptable public posting are not intuitively obvious, even to the experienced telecommunicator. As a result, newcomers are often bewildered and insulted by the "censorship." Nevertheless, I haven't seen censorship on Prodigy in the way I've seen it on some services. Anti-Prodigy messages are posted and so are messages favorable to other telecom services. Messages of that kind are sometimes censored on other services. What is censored? Things like "thank you" messages, advertisements, and messages that apparently don't pertain to the topic of the area. There is no method of appeal, but you can rewrite your message and try posting it again. One problem with the Prodigy censorship is that it's so frequent and so apparent. Censorship takes place on most telecommunication services. Sysops will either delete a message that they deem inappropriate or will move it to the private sysops section that exists in every forum on some services, or will even quietly exclude a member from the forum or from the service. Sometimes this is done properly and sometimes improperly, but almost always quietly, secretly, and infrequently. I've sometimes seen sysops elsewhere post a message saying they're removing a message, giving the reason for the censorship in an effort to head off public complaints about the missing message. On Prodigy, with many messages being censored daily, rarely for good reasons from the public's point of view, and never with explanation, the action creates suspicion, dissatisfaction, and irritation in the membership. I've used Prodigy successfully for the private mail capacity. These messages are posted immediately (not held up for review), and you can write your friends essentially for free at $10/ month. But again, there are disadvantages. Email (private) messages are limited to 4 pages in length, and given the gigantic typeface Prodigy uses, that's not a very long message. No aspect of the messages can be cut, copied, pasted, or saved to disk. Yes, you can print them. I'm someone who characteristically archives a lot of information to disk so the inability to do this on Prodigy is a severe drawback for me. Most people won't suffer as much as I do by this limitation. I intend to continue to use the service in limited ways, but I'm hoping there will be some significant improvements in the Mac software in the next release. Rumors have it that will occur in April/May, but I have no information as to what's being planned for the new version. ============ PUMA RATINGS ============ PERFORMANCE: 1.5. There is lack of support for desk accessories, FKeys, INITs, windows, lack of support for utilities that provide additional menus, inability to cut, copy, paste, inability to save to disk, and inability to print in many key areas of the service. There is no MultiFinder support, and you must use special software. On the other hand, it's pretty, colorful, and fun. USEFULNESS: 2.5. The inability to capture to disk, upload, download, and print from some areas of the service, inhibits the usefulness. Yet, for quick, casual, communication, it's great, and there are dozens of online areas with important information. MANUAL: 2.5. Not much supplied. AVAILABILITY: 3.5. You can probably buy the software in your supermarket. It seems to be available everywhere. Support seemed somewhat overwhelmed when I checked it, but were doing a good job. (Linda Joan Kaplan/19900128)