KPURCELL@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK (03/27/91)
In article <0B010004.s4oi2a@outpost.UUCP>, peirce@outpost.UUCP (Michael Peirce) says: > >In article <1991Mar24.231240.7433@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, kingson@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu >(Kingson Gunawan) writes: >> I am planning to join either prodigy or compuserve. I know about the fact >> that prodigy censor their bulletin board but I don't really mind about that. >> What I need is the kind of service that I get for the amount of money I pay >(in >> other word I need somort of description of service per dollar paid ratio). > >Before you decide, check out America Online. It provides a very >Macintosh-like >user interface and has lots of Macintosh related information and files. What about the new Mac Navigator software for use on CompuServe? Does it make this service easier and cheaper to use? How do folks releativly rate the following services for Mac sers on the basis of: 1. quality of advice 2. number of developers/companies using the service 3. costs for: a. mail (internal and Internet) b. conferencing c. downloading files 4. ease of use the following services: 1. Compuserve 2. GEnie 3. BiX 4. America Online 5. Usenet/Netnews via public access Unix 6. The Well 7. Local BBSes Both 1 and 4 have a user friendly interface. 3 Is cheap. 6 is full of weird folks with similar ideas. There was also an overview in macWorld towards the end of last year. Either email to me or post here. Kevin
wjb@tantalum.eds.com (Bill Biesty) (04/02/91)
Chuck Hoffman's review of AOL corresponds to my impression of it. I quickly got bored of the chat areas (good party dudes!) and now regularly use it to find useful software. Although the system tends to get bogged down in the after work hours 6:00 PM to 12:00 AM. Twice I have been disconnected from AOL while downloading software during those hours due to the host not responding. Once the AOL mac app quick unexpectedly. Now I do my downloads early on Sunday morning with great results: downloads take HALF their expected times! Example: ResEdit 2.1 was supposed to take 70 minutes, instead it took 30. On the user interface, it takes a while to get used to. Ever get lost in a hypercard stack? It can be like that. I once posted and the next week when I went to see if anyone responed, it took me 30 min to find it! Unlike Usenet news AOL allows you to open a bulletin board at will. And there's no way to search for new stuff across all boards in an area without selecting them individually and doing a Find New. (I've recently complained about this.) I had a really great dialog between two other people going about watercoloring which we conducted by email since the above navigation problems were too much to deal with. But it broke up around the beginning of the year. Bill