From: mcglk@bike.rad.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen)
Subject: Re: PRODIGY - Speed, Cost, Usefulness, etc.
Organization: Dubious.
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 02:13:12 GMT

In article <bond.714758068@khaki19> bond@rtsg.mot.com (Allan Bond) writes:
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| I'm seeking PRODIGY users (and especially those who use Macs) who can tell me
| about their experience with the service.
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I'm an ex-Prodigy user.

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| My father (basically computer illiterate) signed up for P* and couldn't be
| more excited about sending e-mail and playing with all the toys.  I, on the
| other hand, am an experienced software engineer who's accustomed to the joys
| of Unix, Usenet news and Internet e-mail.  A few questions:
|
| ** Prodigy is painfully slow.  While I'm sure modem speed plays a role in
|    this, it appears to me that the intense graphics processing (including
|    text which are really graphics) is a significant contributor to its
|    slowness.
|
|    Since I'm using a simple Mac SE with 1 meg RAM + harddisk, would I see a
|    major improvement by adding a math coprocessor to my system?  What about
|    more memory?
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No, not really.  Prodigy doesn't use any math-intensive things to send graphics
to your screen; it just has some very basic modem protocols that say "draw a
circle here, print this string there," and so on.  It's a terribly inefficient
protocol to boot.

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| ** Is there any way to customize the service from my end to reduce the
|    amount of useless advertisements & graphics being dumped to my screen?
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Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.  No, sorry, Allan.  That's the *other* way Prodigy makes its
money.  Getting $12.95/month + some amount for E-mail isn't nearly enough for
them to sustain their marketing campaign, get EAASY SABRE, and so on.

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| ** So far I haven't found anything on Prodigy that I can't do more quickly
|    over the phone.  For example, I can make my own flight reservations using
|    the "Eaasy Sabre" tools, but it takes forever to pull up all the screens
|    necessary to find the flights, fares, and pay for the tickets.  Why not
|    just call a travel agent?
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Why not indeed?  I tried wending my way through the reservation screens for
about twenty minutes to find a flight I wanted; my travel agent managed it in
about four minutes.  EAASY SABRE isn't really all that useful if you have a
travel agent you can work with.

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| ** Are there services on P* that people really find useful?
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Not for me.  The markup for online shopping (and the leeriness of giving my
credit card number over the modem), the fact that I couldn't send E-mail
outside of Prodigy, the fact that news was generally a day old, the fact that
conferences were hard to find (and the fact that they later turned out to be
moderated in a rather heavy-handed manner), the incessant advertisements, and
the incredible slowness caused me to give it up after two months of really
trying hard to get some decent use out of it.  Compuserve is more expensive,
but a heck of a lot more fun.

				---Ken McGlothlen
				   mcglk@cpac.washington.edu
				   mcglk@cpac.bitnet
Newsgroups: comp.misc