Xref: utzoo comp.misc:11414 comp.org.eff.talk:1430 alt.censorship:1216 Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!shelby!neon!Neon!jmc From: jmc@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship Subject: Re: Prodigy Special Offer hits my mailbox... Message-ID: Date: 11 Feb 91 04:18:39 GMT References: <1991Feb6.141621.9765@javelin.es.com> <1991Feb11.061828.20234@looking.on.ca> Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System) Organization: /u/jmc/.organization Lines: 24 In-Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca's message of 11 Feb 91 06:18:28 GMT In article <1991Feb11.061828.20234@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: In article cmcurtin@bluemoon.uucp (Matthew Curtin) writes: >have an MS-DOS or Mac to get on). Besides that, CompuServe doesn't charge >EXTRA, EXTRA, EXTRA for email! Sure, there are surcharges and stuff, but This is unfair to Prodigy. Compuserve charges more than $12.50 per hour for any usable baud rate (if you call 1200 or 2400 usable) and so a mail message that takes 2 minutes to write costs over 40 cents (compared to Prodigy's 25 cents after the first 30 messages) to write and also costs money to read, perhaps around 8 to 10 cents if you deal with it in under 30 seconds. Face it folks, 25 cents per e-mail message with 30 included in the price is actually a good deal when compared to past e-mail pricing trends. Some new trends, including GEnie's unlimited e-mail (but no mailing lists) for $4.95/month, are better deals, and many here are used to the unusual deal of usenet/internet mail, but I am a bit surprised at the bad press Prodigy's gotten on this price change. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 Face it folks, 25 cents per e-mail message is less than the price of a stamp. The chance of timely delivery is similar.