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From: louisg@vpnet.chi.il.us (Louis Giliberto)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Prodigy Special Offer hits my mailbox...
Message-ID: <1991Feb06.223848.13106@vpnet.chi.il.us>
Date: 6 Feb 91 22:38:48 GMT
References: <7569.27addc02@zeus.unomaha.edu> <1991Feb5.182439.12289@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Organization: Vpnet Public Access
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In article <1991Feb5.182439.12289@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> cy5@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Conway Yee) writes:
>
>So the month's membership is free iff (if and only if) you decide that you
>don't like Prodigy.  If you like Prodigy, they get to ream you for that
>month's membership fee.  Interesting. It doesn't sound like that great
>an offer.
>
>					Conway Yee, N2JWQ
>yee@ming.mipg.upenn.edu    (preferred)             231 S. Melville St.
>cy5@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (forwarded to above)    Philadelphia, Pa 19139
>yee@bnlx26.nsls.bnl.gov    (rarely checked)        (215) 386-1312

That's not quite right.  They prebill you for each month, so you would be
charged for your first PAID month's membership.  The first 30 days are free.

As an ex-Prodigy user, here are my thoughts.  The system is one big ad.  That's
fine and dandy.  If it helps keep the cost low, I don't mind looking at ads. 
I even bought a few things off of Prodigy.  The problem is that there is
no payoff.  The message bases are terrible.  There is no organization to them
at all.  It's impossible to pick up reading where you left off previously.

Electronic mail?  Hah.  "Mail" implies a right to privacy which you don't have.
They go through most (if not all) letters you send in E-mail.  It takes longer
for someone to send mail on that system than to send mail in Internet.

Educational benefits?  There are none.  Anyone with half a brain doesn't look
in an encyclopedia after grade school.  Teachers hate them, and you can't
possibly write a decent paper using anything from an encyclopedia.

The on-line games are reminiscent of Commodore 64 public domain garbage.
Totally mindless crap.  I've seen BBS doors with better games.

One thing that really ticked me off as an IBM owner is the fact that IBM
supposedly has a hand in the system, but there was nothing on there for
Microchannel.  I have a hard enough time finding MCA stuff, and it would
seem to me that they would at least have an ordering thing on there for
that.

The bottom line:  Prodigy is a money-making opportunity for companies who
advertise on there.  There is no user-oriented anything on there.  The system
is one constant hard-sell.  If the advertising were used to deflect the cost
and make a profit for PrLE at the same time user beneficial
facilities were present, then I owuld have no problem.  Prodigy is more
concerned with how much money they and their businesses on-line can make
than giving the user anything worthile.

On a high-note, the on-line news was quite good.

Louis