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

To: White Shoes who wrote (6715)	1/7/1998 8:41:00 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13594

No AOL perhaps, but I find one interface as good as the next since all I'm going to do is go to SI and check my e-mail anyway. White Shoes, your proving the bulls point. If you, like millions of other people, just use your ISP to check e-mail and the SI thread, why in the hell would you need ISDN, xDSL, cable, satellite, etc. etc.? So you can download your e-mail at 10mbps? And end up paying $40 a month for service, config headaches, set-up costs, etc. etc? When are the bears going to realize that the market AOL predominately targets is not the guy down the road subscribing to Lan Times, running a leased line to his house, running Linux on his pc, worrying about kernels, etc. etc.!! We are talking about the 486/Pentium crowd with 16mb ram and a video/sound card. That magical sub $1000 pc market that has sprouted up. High speed access is not for everyone, is not readily available everywhere, and costs more. As already noted on this thread, cable access is supported by AOL, as well as 56K, ISDN, etc. Working on xDSL... S.

To: White Shoes who wrote (6715)	1/8/1998 11:40:00 PM
From: Paul Houle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

...Paul, my point is, a phone company can just as easily come up with an internet service with a cute name, a free disk, easy installation, and a copy of Netscape with presets to... White Shoes, it that's exactly what Microsoft thought. Perhaps you believe a phone company is better at implementing an interet/online system than they. I disagree that AOL's service is that much worse than Bell or any ISP. From an access, email, and uptime standpoint I think they do very well. And they offer customer service, which is a valuable feature to non-technical customers. Perhaps one must be a bit patient before getting any of said service... There is a great deal of uniqueness to AOL's content. It is NOT uniquely fast (in fact it is relatively uniquely slow). Ask yourself then, why is AOL so successful at attracting and retaining customers? And whatever reason you come up, tell me why the situation will change. (If your answer is higher bandwidth without making a case why the bulk of users need it, I am going to pound my head against the wall). ...Paul