From: rlv@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Ralph L. Vinciguerra)
Subject: X*Press info service drops Amiga?!?!
Summary: Join the mailing list.
Originator: rlv@silver.lcs.mit.edu
Keywords: X*Press, xpress, information service, amiga, cable, TV
Organization: MIT Lab for Computer Science
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 15:43:34 GMT

Well. It happened to me again. First Wordperfect drops out of the Amiga
market, and now the X*Press information service too! Now, we can find
good substitutes for wordperfect, but this digital cable information service
has no substitutes yet.

X*Press supports news delivery over television cable. You buy a small receiver
box which connects to your computer from the cable feed and you can read
several kinds of information at your leisure with focused searches available,
all on you computer. Finally we can join the information revolution....

There is no ongoing charge unless you purchase special services like
stock quotes. The basic device you need has a one time cost of $200-300.
You also need to determine if your local cable company carries their feed.
(I'm currently fighting that battle as well, people using continental
cablevision in Massachusetts: let's get together).

It's time to put a stop to this contining trend of drop outs. Specially now
that the Amiga is poised to really take off. CDTV really fits in well with
this picture! If any Commodore folks are listening, spread the word through
the ranks!

They had adverstised their support of many platforms, including the Amiga.
But I called today and they informed me that the Amiga version is no
longer being sold. I expressed my disappointment, and their representative
complained that they literally served only 10 Amiga customers!

They cater primarily to the education market. I would have thought that many
schools would have Amigas based on their cost effectiveness, but I could be
wrong. But, people like myself would also like to have this service at home.
I find it very attractive since it doesn't have on on-going cost.

I suppose the most disturbing thing was that the person on the phone was
willing to stake her reputation on the fact that they would not support
the Amiga in the future. It was as if she aware of some details which
made support of the Amiga very difficult within her company. Perhaps their
Amiga version had many problems, and they became stressed trying to support
it with the income from only 10 users. If we could justify 100 or 1000 new
Amiga customers, that would probably swing them around.

I noted on this group that a discussion group was being formed concerning
this service. I'm joining up. If you're interested, join us and perhaps we
can have a letter writing campaign, or some kind of group purchase of the
service to convince them of our market potential. Commodore could sure help
out by being a central force in this, especially with the CDTV connection.
I don't have the mailing list request address on me, sorry. It's in another
message in this group I think.

A vision:
What a package! You cruise out, buy a CDTV, and it comes with a coupon to
save $$$ on the purchase of this cable option, along with the software
provided on a free CD-ROM along with a demo, to give you a taste of the
quality of information. The market for this would be a significant fraction
of the CDTV market. It could even sell more CDTV's.

Better vision:
CDTV plus. Comes with the box and software, ready to go. For a slightly higher
price.



Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc