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Technology Stocks : General Magic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kurt Goebel who wrote (3547)	8/25/1998 6:08:00 AM
From: Kurt Goebel	Respond to of 10081

JC, while we are doing the cost estimates, I forgot that if you sign up for Portico for a year you get 10% off. That further lowers the cost of Portico relative to the other services you have mentioned. If you sign up now you get 50% more minutes so Portico is the cheaper alternative and it does more for you. I also noticed Webley pricing is made out to be a special pricing for charter members. Perhaps it will be higher soon?

To: Kurt Goebel who wrote (3547)	8/25/1998 9:26:00 AM
From: JC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

Kurt, you and others are correct in saying I did not include all factors in my Portico pricing. If I scale out to the 99.95$ plan fully (with my 400 minute model= 650 +50 extra find me = 750), and add those extra minutes to the cost of Webley for example + the extra 50 minutes of find me , Webleys cost comes out as $82.00 as opposed to $74.55, still cheaper than Portico but with the 10% annual discount, Portico prices out as @90$, only 8$ off the Webley price. Webley has changed their pricing from the website, I confirmed from customer service. The email and conference calling (Portico does NOT have conference calling at all.. something I mentioned to my CWG rep and she said she would bring up to them) are now free, and included in the 14.95 a month price. Webley does have a calendar, and it also includes a sync program akin to TrueSync for Portico. Webley has also been in the market longer than Portico, 1 year plus. As for resellers I am not sure who resells for Webley, the topic never came up when I was talking to their sales/support people. I think they are doing most of their own selling right now(I subscribed to it through the corporate office). It is true that Webley does not offer stock quotes, or news, but I know that Portico's news and Stock are FAR from perfect right now, and are more a showcase of bugs than working services. Showing my boss Portico yesterday It got three of the company names wrong I asked for stock quotes for, then it told me there was no news on General Magic. And the personal News profile still does not work on the web. I was also disapointed that TruSync software was not shipped with my Portico packet. Voices for Webley are not yet available to individual customers, but the rep told me that corporate customers have a choice of voices (english butler and american female). As to others comments about the rigid structure of Webley's voice interface, I think that though Portico allows for more flexibility with politeness, etc, Webleys commands aren't exceptionally difficult to master, and after all, it isnt that tough to program in variances in the long run! Having used both services I still think Portico is better, but I think the DD on this market shows that Webley, and some of the other TUI-based services will have market share and possibly competitive advantage over Portico in certain aspects. Feel free to deconstruct my points as you will, It is only my opinion, and I could be wrong!! Have a great tuesday. JC