Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!bionet!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: nelson%odin.corp.sgi.com@sgi.com (Nelson Bolyard) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: AT&T MAIL ACCESS Program Description Message-ID: <14689@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 14 Nov 90 01:31:30 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 74 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 821, Message 1 of 4 Executive (:-) Summary: If you have and use AT&T Mail's "ACCESS" program for the PC or MacIntosh, please write a description of how it works, how you use it, how user-friendly it is, etc, and mail it to me or post it to the TELECOM Digest (comp.dcom.telecom). In article <14630@accuvax.nwu.edu> Mike Van Pelt wrote about the GEnie Star*Services, and provided a wonderful description of GEnies' program called Aladdin. Aladdin essentially allows you to forget that GEnie is an on-line service. Instead of perceiving yourself as logged into a computer far away, you interact with your own personal computer, and it deals with GEnie off-line (that is to say, behind your back, while you're not looking). Like Mike, I want to use e-mail to converse with a distant relative. Since I am already on the Internet, I want an e-mail service for my relative with a mail gateway to the Internet. GEnie's Star*Services e-mail has no such gateway (or so I have been told by one of GEnie's e-mail operations personnel, not a customer sales rep). So I chose AT&T Mail. $30/year, a few cents per message (I forget the exact amount), no connect time charges, 800-number so no toll charges. And they have a mail gateway to the Internet. AT&T has a pair of programs that they want you to buy to use AT&T Mail. Both are named "ACCESS", one is for the PC, one for the MacIntosh. Each reportedly costs about $150 (just went up, used to be about $100). I have been trying, unsuccessfully, for about six weeks to get some information on those programs. I have called 800-MAIL-672 about six times, and written numerous e-mail letters to people at attmail.com. So far, I've received three brochures, one of which has two sentences about ACCESS, one has one paragraph, and one (actually a sheet describing system requirements) that tells me the PC version is actually five TSRs, which take up a total of something like 350 K bytes (I think). One e-mail letter I got from someone at attmail.com told me that ACCESS provides only "glass teletype" terminal emulation, no VT-100 or other terminal emulation. So I know what it DOESN'T do, but what DOES it do? It has fewer ADVERTISED features than any other terminal emulation programs I can think of (like Procomm Plus) that cost less than one third of the price of ACCESS. Now I suppose, if its main purpose is to be like Aladdin and hide the interaction with the central mail hub from the end-user, that it's OK for it to not have good terminal emulation. But why should I have to make a wild-a**ed guess about what their $150 program does before buying it? Evidently, AT&T has NO brochures to SELL their expensive program! The only way to get the owners manual is to buy the product, and there's no satisfaction-or-your-money-back no-questions-asked 30-day guarantee. No demo version is available, and the local AT&T sales reps don't know about ACCESS and can't demo it. Every time I think about this, I remember something I read in an old TELECOM Digest article about "couldn't sell drugs at a Grateful Dead concert". So, please, if you use this ACCESS program and are willing to play AT&T sales rep, please tell me all about it. Or, if you're in the San Francisco Bay area, and are willing to do a demo, please call me. Nelson Bolyard nelson@sgi.COM {decwrl,sun}!sgi!whizzer!nelson 415-335-1919 Disclaimer: Views expressed herein do not represent the views of my employer. [Moderator's Note: You do *not* need those programs to use ATT Mail! I use one of my terminals and the printer attached to it and get along just fine. Some time ago, they tried to tell me I needed a PC to use the mail. Whether or not the program you describe, at the price offered is worthwhile or not is a judgment you need to make. PAT]