Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: mvp@hsv3.uucp (Mike Van Pelt) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Info Needed on Prodigy Service Message-ID: <14628@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 13 Nov 90 02:33:04 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Mike Van Pelt Organization: Video 7 + G2 = Headland Technology Lines: 56 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 815, Message 2 of 8 I've got Prodigy; mostly because my sister-in-law in Denver has it, and I save more than $10/mo in phone bills for conversations between her and my wife. With the new charges, that may no longer be the case. The new charge of $ .25/message over 30 per month starts in January. This is made worse by the fact that email is limited to 48 lines, at about 40 characters per line. Yecch. Ginny and Barb typically send four or five letters per session to get everything said that they want to say. Then, whoever's receiving the message has to go through all manner of contortions to get the messages in chronological order. Mail is in your mailbox in "Last in, first out" order, and Prodigy provides a "NEXT MAIL" button, but no "PREVIOUS MAIL", so you have to go all the way back to the mail menu and manually select the previous message. I've glanced at a couple of the bulletin boards, but it is so *G*R*O*T*E*S*Q*U*E*L*Y* *P*A*I*N*F*U*L*L*Y* *S*L*O*W* that I haven't looked at them in months. I joined a mailing list at one point, but quickly gave that up. Again, it's **SLOW**, and very inflexible. Everyone on the mailing list has to create a "mailing list" alias specifying everyone on the list. And again, you can not easily read mail in chronological order. The $ .25/message charge doesn't only affect mailing lists; my sister-in-law sends several messages per day to various "modem pals." As for printing, you can print screens -- if, and only if, Prodigy saw fit to equip that screen with a "PRINT" button, or enabled the "COPY" function on the Jump Screen. You can print out your stock quotes, and the encyclopedia entries are printable. You can not save to disk with the Prodigy software, but there are shareware utilities that get around this. I sometimes run a TSR that diverts all print into a file, which works if the screens you're interested in are printable. There is also a utility that will print an "unprintable" screen, but I haven't used it. In general, if you're technically sophisticated enough to be reading TELECOM Digest, then you'll find that Prodigy is an insult to your intelligence. It resembles most of all those TeleText things in the airports. So, I'm trying to convince my in-laws to get a GEnie account or a Unix EMAIL account. If and when I'm sucessful, the Prodigy account goes. On the plus side, Ginny would never touch the computer until we got Prodigy. Now she's playing games on the PC, and even using Microsoft Word. Mike Van Pelt Headland Technology/Video 7 ...ames!vsi1!v7fs1!mvp