Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: ima!johnl@harvard.harvard.edu (John R. Levine) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: AT&T Mail vs MCI Mail Message-ID: Date: 30 Jun 89 01:50:02 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: "John R. Levine" Organization: Segue Software, Inc. Lines: 38 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 219, message 3 of 8 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 Globe