Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Fri, 26 Apr 91 13:11:51 -0400 From: Christopher Lott Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Prodigy Questions Message-ID: Organization: The University of Maryland Dept of Computer Science Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 310, Message 5 of 11 Lines: 67 In article Arnette Baker writes: > I am looking for information on Prodigy. > Can Internet users send e-mail to Prodigy users and vice-a-versa? To the best of my knowledge, no. I believe that this IS possible for Compuserve, due to the kindness of Ohio-State's CIS software staff. >I also need some comparative analysis of Prodigy vs. Compuserve. Do >the two offer similar services besides e-mail? Of particular interest Sorry, can't do comparative analysis. But here's a few thoughts on Prodigy. I was offered their free one-month subscription along with free s/w, so I bit. IMHO the best thing about the service is access to SABRE, the airline reservations system from American Airlines. You can check flights, availability, fares, and place reservations. Then you contact a travel agent to charge the ticket. Prodigy has some travel agent support online, but I don't know how good it is. In terms of privacy, it's somewhat invasive WRT credit cards. The SABRE system won't let you in until you supply a credit card number, but it doesn't do much validation; I've heard a bogus number works great. Lots of other offers want you to type in your credit card number; I never did. Just in case you didn't know this, the reason Prodigy is so cheap is that they show an advertisement on nearly every screen. And during a lengthy screen repaint, they very carefully draw the ad first and let you stare at it while the rest of the screen is being redrawn. To date, I have received no junk mail resulting from Prodigy selling their lists. I made sure by deliberately entering my address with a small mistake, and no junk mail has shown up with THAT as the address. However, it was fun requesting freebies, product info, etc. from the advertisers. Got a swell miata poster and some other goodies; nothing really great though. The stock market quote service (and "portfolio tracker") are nice, if you want to follow your securities closely. There's an endless amount of stuff to burn time with. Games, forums, newsy stories, etc. I have Usenet for that already ;-) Forget about using a 1200 baud modem with Prodigy, unless you're VERY patient. Between modem slowness and system delays, it's SLOW with a 1200. Never used email on it; you get a certain number of messages free each month, and then each one costs you $.25 past that free number. Don't know about their privacy policy, but I wouldn't count on ANYTHING. That's all I can think of right now. If I get another free month somehow, I'll sign up again. But *I* sure wouldn't pay for it. Not when I have free access to Usenet! Christopher Lott \/ Dept of Comp Sci, Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 cml@cs.umd.edu /\ 4122 AV Williams Bldg 301 405-2721 [Moderator's Teaser: If its *privacy* you want, the latest word is Prodigy violates your privacy regularly. In the next issue of the Digest, I'll be printing (what I feel is) a *very explosive* report I received recently from a regular user of that service. Apparently they have no hesitation or compuction against raping your hard drive in the process of getting you established on line. PAT]