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- Path: sparky!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Harv
- From: Harv@cup.portal.com (Harv R Laser)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm
- Subject: Re: FCC considering "modem fees" again
- Message-ID: <62993@cup.portal.com>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 11:49:52 PDT
- Organization: The Portal System (TM)
- References: <rlcarr.04qa@animato.network23.com> <1T9FoB6w164w@zswamp.UUCP>
- <62802@cup.portal.com> <3417@faatcrl.UUCP> <Bs2KD7.9q@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
- <3436@faatcrl.UUCP>
- Lines: 65
-
- Jack Radigan sez:
- >
- > No matter how bad some others make out the high cost of CIS over their
- >cheaper systems, the one benefit you have is the ability to use automated
- >messaging programs like TapCIS for the PeeCee or Whap! for the Amiga. Both
- >are supported online there and can really make for some economical messaging,
- >so long as you resist downloading and save that for a local BBS or new Fish
- >disk.
- >
- > Another plus, especially people like me who are not local to a Tymnet or
- >Telenet indial is the fact the CIS often has a local indial that doesn't add
- >another few dollars per hour to the connection.
- >
- > -jack-
-
- In other words, Jack, use the CI$ automated programs to see what's new
- in their libraries but don't download there, cuz their prices are so
- high.. instead, go scour local BBSes (and put up with busy signals)
- or wait and see if the stuff shows up on Fish Disks? I don't know if
- you keep up with Fish Disks, but as good a job as Fred does on utilities,
- languages, source code, programming and such (and this is NOT to take away
- anything from Fred Fish.. he is a SAINT in the Amiga community as far as
- I'm concerned), his disks are very lean on art, graphics, pictures,
- animations, music, demos and such. Besides, you can't hardly justify
- defending a service whose prices are so high that you actually
- DIScourage people from downloading there. That's pretty wacky.
-
- Besides that, a national or international online service offers a sense
- of "community" that simply can't be found on one or two line user-run
- BBSes. It's also highly unlikely that you can log into a BBS and find
- dozens of big-name Amiga developers hanging out, posting notices and
- answering questions (and putting a stop to rumors).
-
- So the question then becomes how much a user is willing to spend to
- use a national pay service and still be able to eat and have
- shelter. Don't you think that a service with enormous Amiga resources
- on board, one that's multi-user and well-maintained, and is MUCH
- lower priced than another service should be considered as an extremely
- viable alternative? It would seem that only the rich wouldn't care.
-
- If it helps to sweeten the stew any, Portal customers are about to be
- treated to a fully intuitionized Amiga front end which will allow
- them to do all the things the programs you named can do on their host
- system: capture streams of notices and read and reply to them offline
- (using one's favorite text editor), get file catalogs and choose files
- to be downloaded upon next log in, read and reply to email, and so on.
- This program has been in development a long time and we've had a couple
- dozen Beta testers bashing away on it for many months now. It's fully
- free-standing, coded in C, and doesn't require another terminal program
- or any scripting to set up and operate. As an added plus, the author
- of the program is going to release it as fully-enabled shareware.
- No crippling of features. No demanding bucks up front to get a useful
- version.
-
- So there are ways to do things, and there are other ways to do things.
- One can submit to a barrage of advertising and then learn how fast
- a credit card can melt. Or one can do a bit of judicious shopping and
- learn of the alternatives out there whereby they can get just as much,
- no, MORE of what they're after and do it for a mere fraction of the
- cost.
-
- I'm pleased to be able to say I'm heavily involved with one of those
- alternatives.
-
- Harv
-