Re: Genie...is it worth it?

[toddpw@mix.ugcs.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)]

bird@nwsrs.nw.att.com (J. L. Walters) writes:

>Current charges are $7.50/month for four hours access which works out
>to be $1.88/hour which I usually stay within. WHY the price goes up
>with increased usage is beyound me and I'd love to see an explanation.

This is not official, but I'll take a stab at one: The two most common types
of GEnie user are people like yourself who barely use the service and want
to spend as little as possible when they do, and people who are "addicted"
and spend large amounts of time online. The regular price per hour is what
GEIS really wants to charge, but they don't want to lose all the casual
users so the price for the first few hours per month is cheaper.

>of local storage, Unix, ftp, www, etc., etc., at 14.4K. GEnie asks
>extra for higher speeds.

GEnie is basically spare CPU time on the ancient crusty mainframes that
GEIS (GE Information Services) maintain and sell time on to various
companies. Within the really grand scheme of things, GEnie has thrived
_in_spite_of_ the rest of GEIS, which historically has not treated GEnie
as seriously as it deserved. Internet access only showed up recently, and
it takes a fair amount of money to upgrade the entire modem pool, so that's
been moving rather slowly. They do have an 800 number modem pool of 9600 baud
modems, and I think they deserve some credit for making that available.

BTW It always makes sense to charge more for your higher speed modems until
there are no low speed modems left -- that way you encourage people who won't
use the extra speed to leave those modems free for people who _will_ use it.

GEnie is the only non-internet online account I keep these days, because the
users who aren't scared off by the cruder interface and lack of sexier modems
are also more likely to care about the content of what they post because
they and other people have to pay money to read it. I will never go back to
AOL; it is hip-deep in drivel and morons. I am 100% against the concept in
Prodigy. There isn't enough incentive for me personally to move to Compu$erve
or Delphi, since I am one of those people who don't really use the 9600 baud
access that much.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ ugcs.caltech.edu