#: 14970 S10/OS9/6809 (CoCo)
    14-Apr-92  00:04:45
Sb: #14965-#In memoriam
Fm: Ian Hodgson 72177,1762
To: John Wight 76370,2100

John,

Several users have now commented on the cost issue as being a determining
factory mitigating against CIS. One of the commonest suggestions is that Delphi
is much cheaper. That may, indeed, be true for U.S. customers, but I have to
access it from Canada through a communications network such as Datapac, which
charges about $15 per hour, in addition to the Delphi charges. Since I have a
local Compuserve node and avoid the communications surcharge, CIS is actually
much less expensive for me.

I have heard of Fidonet frequently, but have no idea how to find out where the
closest node is. The information would be of interest. I am not sure what the
relationship between the OS9 Community Network and Fidonet is. But your
suggestion that long distance calls are cheaper than CIS is, regretfully, not
true in this part of the world. While they have come down in cost, a long
distance call at anything but the lowest after-midnight weekend rate is about
$30 per hour to anywhere even in the nearby U.S. and about $18 at the rock
bottom rate. Still too much, sigh.

Of course, if forums, or a user selected subset of forums, were to be included
in the basic flat rate ... but I am dreaming, I suppose. Anyway, with
intelligent use of fast downloads and going on about 3 times a week my
Compuserve bill is only about $30/month, and that is before the flat rate, so
it may even be a hair lower now. I can live with that.

Thanks for the comments.

Ian

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