Newsgroups: houston.general
Subject: Re: electronic mail access through Compuserve
From: lkim@swri.edu (Louis Kim)
Date: 14 Dec 92 18:21:03 CST
Distribution: houston
Organization: Southwest Research Institute

In article <MCINTOSH.92Dec14122701@dawn.rice.edu> mcintosh@rice.edu (Nathaniel McIntosh) writes:
>Subject: electronic mail access through Compuserve
>From: mcintosh@rice.edu (Nathaniel McIntosh)
>Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 18:27:01 GMT
>Hi netters,
>
>A question for y'all:
>
>I have a friend in Philadelphia who works as part of a small group of
>consultants who help universities set up outreach programs, i.e.
>establishing programs that allow college students to help kids in
>inner-city elementary and high schools.  He spends a large part of his
>day interacting with people at universities, and he thinks that he'd
>be able to save a lot of time if he could send email and exchange
>files.  His group uses PC's of various flavors (mostly Macs). Their
>level of technical expertise is such that they wouldn't be able to set
>up their own Unix machine with uucp, etc.
>
>Can anyone recommend a good service which provides cheap access to
>email for someone with just a PC and a modem? I've heard that
>Compuserve provides this service, but I have no idea how much they
>charge or whether they do a good job. I've also heard of a company
>called PSI which is in this business.
>
>If any of you have favorable or unfavorable experiences to report
>about this sort of thing, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!
>
>Nat
>--
>Nathaniel McIntosh     |    Department of Computer Science
>mcintosh@cs.rice.edu   |    Rice University, P.O. Box 1892
>713-527-8101 x2731     |    Houston, Texas 77251   USA

Nat, 
	A Compuserve subscription will allow your friend to send e-mail 
through internet.  I'm not sure about file transfers over internet.  The 
basic package for Compuserve is $7.95/month which includes Associated Press 
News, Weather, movie reviews, online games and other basic features.  
Forums are the meat of Compuserve; they're similar to then newsgroups here 
on the net, in that they center on a particular topic and people exchange 
messages related to that topic.  The topics range from the purely 
recreational, like the OUTDOOR forum to many support forums by software and 
hardware manufacturers.  The downside of forums is that accessing incurs a 
hourly charge based on the modem speed you're accessing Compuserve with.  It'
s (I think) $12.50 for 2400 bps and $22.50 for 9600 bps.  With a good 
offline reader, your costs should be manageable.  
	Receiving internet messages are free, but sending internet messages 
incurs a fee that I'm not sure of.
	Another online service that offers internet mail is MCI mail.  I'm 
not familar with it's services.  I suggest that your friend call each online 
service and request a brochure.
	There always is the option that can call into a internet site with a 
modem.  All he would need to do is to set up account.
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