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

To: vegetarian who wrote (6793)	1/13/1998 10:11:00 AM
From: Brent D. Beal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

Although one shouldn't get emotionally involved with a stock, in addition to thinking AOL is a lousy company, with lousy fundamentals, a business plan that won't work, an arrogant CEO, generally bad service, a horrible reputation, and both marketing and accounting practices that border on fraud, I just plain hate this company. Even if I don't make a penny on the way down, I'm going to enjoy watching it self-destruct. Everyone seems to think that MSN gave up, but they've just begun a fairly serious marketing campaign and are adding subscribers. So is AT&T, Earthlink, and at least 5 other national ISPs, all with better service and almost no annoying ads. Add to this announcements like Yahoo! and MCI, cable modem services, which are just now being rolled out in mass, and a subscriber base that is becoming more and more educated about the internet, and I think its fairly obvious that AOL is dogmeat. I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the show. . .

To: vegetarian who wrote (6793)	1/13/1998 10:30:00 AM
From: Brent D. Beal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13594

Fast access to the Internet, if you have deep enough pockets, is not just a dream of the future. "DirecPC," a satellite service from Hughes Electronics that is a cousin of the popular digital satellite system (DSS) for television programming, is now available everywhere in the continental United States. And it operates up to 14 times faster than the 28,800 bits-per-second telephone modems found in most home computers. Hughes introduced DirecPC early in 1997, a year after launching DSS, and in July brought out a combination dish called "DirecDuo" that can receive both data and television signals. I've just spent a week evaluating DirecDuo and I can report that it works as advertised: I got lightning-fast access to the World Wide Web, as well as somewhere in excess of 200 crystal-clear television channels from a single 21-inch satellite dish temporarily mounted in my backyard. For more information about DirecPC or DirecDuo, call Hughes at (800) 347-3272 or visit the company's Web site (http://www.direcpc.com). Progress, of course, always comes at a price. The DirecDuo hardware package costs $699, which gets you the dish, a circuit board required for your computer and a receiver for the TV signals. You'll pay another $250 for a professional installer to put it all together - a step I strongly encourage for any but the most technically savvy. DirecPC service also is pricey, with subscription plans that range up to a staggering $129.95 per month. DSS television programming, which doesn't include local broadcast stations, typically costs $29 per month and up. Here's how DirecPC works: The DirecDuo or DirecPC dish, each measuring 21 inches across, is pointed toward the southern sky at a satellite parked in a fixed spot above the Earth. The satellite transmits such a huge torrent of digital data that thousands of subscribers - Hughes won't say how many - can simultaneously receive individual streams of information at 400,000 bits per second, also referred to as 400 kilobits per second, or kbps. Typical home PC modems receive data at 28.8 kbps, just one-fourteenth the speed of DirecPC. The much-touted ISDN high-speed telephone lines, which aren't available everywhere in the nation, run at only 128 kbps, one-third of DirecPC's capacity. But DirecPC is a one-way street that pipes data into your computer. To send messages to DirecPC, such as electronic mail or instructions to select a new Web page, you have to connect to an Internet service provider, or ISP, through a conventional modem. This isn't a huge liability, because home users ordinarily don't need to dispatch a lot of data "upstream." Obviously, DirecPC won't help with certain types of intensive two-way communications such as videoconferencing. Yet the need for a modem connection does increase the cost. You need an account with an ISP that supports the usual Net communications standards - these days, almost everyone except for America Online - for which you're likely to pay at least $20 a month on top of DirecPC's fees. *** Interesting, I wonder what this service will look like in a year? Doesn't look like AOL will be handling any of the ISP business for subscribers due to compatibility issues, but then we already knew that anyone even marginally knowledgable wouldn't use AOL. . . AT&T is also testing a similar PCS service, it combines cellular and internet access--its cheaper but only runs at around 200 bps--I'll bet people who sign up for that service won't be looking at cyber junk mail. . . oops I guess that rules out AOL as even a possibility. AOL really is dogmeat.