a_unique_person
27th March 2003, 05:29 PM
Ah, yes, Compuserve. Heard about it but never could afford it. Or $800 per month to get instant stock prices.
How clever we thought ourselves when we convinced our 1200bps modem to connect to an electronic bulletin board - the forerunner of the internet - or to set up a packet-switching service on our phone that allowed us to log on to CompuServe in the United States.
It puts ISP charges into perspective when you consider that in 1990, when a dollar was worth substantially more than it is today, we paid $US39.95 ($A67. 76) to join CompuServe, and cheerfully spent $12.50 an hour for the privilege of downloading text messages. On top of that, it cost us another $34 an hour for the telephone connection.
We were actually grateful for the opportunity to cough up $506 for a 2400bps modem, which dramatically reduced the time we spent online. And although there were shareware communications programs, something like Microphone II for the Macintosh cost another $499.
Given that we had spent more than $12,000 on an 80286 PC and a laser printer, it seemed a genuine bargain. Those were the days when you paid $999 for a Commodore Amiga (512KB of RAM) and another $500 for the monitor. And a SoundBlaster sound card cost $399. By 1991, we were recommending as a minimum configuration an 80386 processor, 4MB of RAM and at least a 100MB hard drive to run Windows in its "enhanced" mode.
Telstra expected users to pay $800 a month for their Discovery Premium Money Watch service, which allowed the rich and the insane to check out stock prices. The slow videotext service, which provided access to online games, cost $60 a year and $15 a month, plus 15 to 20 cents a minute between 8am and 6pm. Searching OTC's Intelnet databases cost a $50 membership fee, $100 for "password maintenance", and a search that resulted in up to 10 titles of articles set you back $20. An abstract for any of the titles cost $3 extra.
When you consider what you get free on the web, you realise how much those services deserved to die. And Telstra apparently has not learnt any lessons from the experience.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/26/1048354635714.html
How clever we thought ourselves when we convinced our 1200bps modem to connect to an electronic bulletin board - the forerunner of the internet - or to set up a packet-switching service on our phone that allowed us to log on to CompuServe in the United States.
It puts ISP charges into perspective when you consider that in 1990, when a dollar was worth substantially more than it is today, we paid $US39.95 ($A67. 76) to join CompuServe, and cheerfully spent $12.50 an hour for the privilege of downloading text messages. On top of that, it cost us another $34 an hour for the telephone connection.
We were actually grateful for the opportunity to cough up $506 for a 2400bps modem, which dramatically reduced the time we spent online. And although there were shareware communications programs, something like Microphone II for the Macintosh cost another $499.
Given that we had spent more than $12,000 on an 80286 PC and a laser printer, it seemed a genuine bargain. Those were the days when you paid $999 for a Commodore Amiga (512KB of RAM) and another $500 for the monitor. And a SoundBlaster sound card cost $399. By 1991, we were recommending as a minimum configuration an 80386 processor, 4MB of RAM and at least a 100MB hard drive to run Windows in its "enhanced" mode.
Telstra expected users to pay $800 a month for their Discovery Premium Money Watch service, which allowed the rich and the insane to check out stock prices. The slow videotext service, which provided access to online games, cost $60 a year and $15 a month, plus 15 to 20 cents a minute between 8am and 6pm. Searching OTC's Intelnet databases cost a $50 membership fee, $100 for "password maintenance", and a search that resulted in up to 10 titles of articles set you back $20. An abstract for any of the titles cost $3 extra.
When you consider what you get free on the web, you realise how much those services deserved to die. And Telstra apparently has not learnt any lessons from the experience.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/26/1048354635714.html