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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tim Kenney who wrote (6491)	12/18/1997 10:11:00 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13594

Lets see Tim. Companies offering cablem modems... Intel Zenith Motorola General Instruments Cisco The list keeps growing... So you think that a cable co is gonna desing and market the xyz Box cable modem? Or are they just gonna contact Intel and paste the label on? Or maybe the consumer will buy x cable modem and call x cable provider for access. Now, I'm sure cable will have their own little splash screen with links to go there and here. So, when you sign up for cable access that is what you get - faster access. You think those "tech savvy" guys and girls are drooling over the stupid content of a cable co provider splash page!!! It's all about BANDWITH Tim. Let me try and make it clear. You get a cable modem installed, your connected by xyz cable co, you can surf the net...and you can log onto AOL at a faster speed. xyz cable co could care less where the hell you surf - they just want that $40 a month. I'm sure down the road the cable co's will be trying to generate ad streams on their splash pages...but for those "tech savvy" consumers, it ain't about that... Now, go tell the cable maintenance guy to go confiugre your kernels on the Linux system your running on your home pc! S.

To: Tim Kenney who wrote (6491)	12/18/1997 10:18:00 AM
From: Brent D. Beal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

True life story-- I called by brother-in-law last night and he told me that he had just purchased a computer (he just finished med school and has managed to stay nearly completely computer illiterate, so this was a pretty big step) and had signed up with AOL because he wanted to get onto the internet and set up an e-mail account. Curious, I asked him how he liked the service (I didn't tell him what I think of AOL because I wanted to hear his reaction). He said he had 50 free hours, but didn't think he was even going to use that--he said right after he signed up for the first time, he got some big splash ad trying to get him to buy some trinket, which was annoying, and that by the time he signed off he felt like he'd just spent an hour with a used-car salesman. He also said that he went from the e-mail area into something that was labeled "email-extras" and found some neat e-mail greeting cards, which he almost started sending to people, until he read the small print about the cost--he was pretty miffed that AOL didn't make the cost for explicit. He said he'd already be asking around at the hospital and that some friends has told him to set up an e-mail account at Yahoo! or Hot-mail and to sign up with either AT&T or Earthlink for his ISP--he asked me if I thought it was good advice and of course I said yes. . . This all came from someone who 3 weeks ago was computer illiterate. In under 3 days with AOL he'd already figured out the service was crappy and had gotten some concrete advice about better products. AOL better hope this type of scenario isn't common--but I'm betting that it's more common that the company admits. But you know what, I bet he gets counted in their subscriber numbers for the next few months. . . Sooner or later this company is going to run our of suckers, or at least the rate at which they are finding suckers is going to slow, which from an investing standpoint in nearly the same thing--either way the stock is coming down hard. . .