Online to Compuserve

In my past articles, you will have found some reference to Compuserve. After each one, I have been bombarded by questions from readers on how to access Compuserve, what one can find there, how much it costs, etc. Finally, PKR from PC Quest called saying, in effect, that I had teased my readers long enough, and that it was time to cough up the goods. OK, your wish is my command. So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the world's biggest, best known and most popular Online Information Service - Compuserve.

A little background:

Most of my readers will not really be interested in Compuserve's history, but let me quickly cover the essentials. Compuserve Information Service (CIS) began as a large computer time sharing setup that made computer time available to people who otherwise had no computing resources. It gradually grew into an information service that today acts as a host to almost a million users world-wide. Initially utilising computer time on various mainframe computers during off-time hours, it now runs on a bank of powerful mainframes located in Columbus, Ohia, in the USA. It has been around for almost a decade, something that is easily recognisable from the name - "Compu" is a prefix that was being used to death in the 80's in the USA, and even today in India. What makes Compuserve so popular is the mind boggling array of subjects that are covered by hundreds and hundreds of forums and special service areas, including Electronic Mail, Online shopping malls, airline guides and, of course, computing support forums.

Please login:

Compuserve works more or less like you local BBS - you call it with your modem, login using a User ID and a password, and then use the menus to navigate around. To access Compuserve, you'll have to have a terminal of sorts (PC, Mac, Unix terminal with CU, etc.), a modem and a credit card. You will also need a phone line to either call the USA direct (rattle, rattle, more cash down the bit-bucket) or an account on INET or GPSS. Assuming that you have all these, all you need to do is connect to Compuserve, and register. One of the easiest ways to register is through the ZiffNet gateway. To do this, set your modem to 2400/1200 bps, Space parity, 7 databits and 1 stopbit, connect to INET or GPSS, enter your password and account number followed by the Compuserve NUA. On INET, this means entering "Npppppp,uuuuuu-03132", where "pppppp" is your INET password, and "uuuuuu" is your account number. On GPSS, enter "Npppppp-3132". When the connection to Compuserve is established, enter "CIS" at the HOST prompt, "177000,5000" as User ID and "PC*MAGNET" at the password prompt. When asked for the agreement number, enter "Z11D9200". Enter the information that will be asked off you, and have your credit card ready (VISA or MasterCard). You will be registered and given a User ID, and about a week later you will receive an access password by post, after which you can get on with the show. Another way is to ask someone in the USA to pick up and send you a Compuserve starter pack (about $25), which gives you a direct Compuserve account without having to go through the ZiffNet gateway. Compuserve steadfastly refuses to offer pre-paid accounts, so unless you have a credit card valid in the USA (or have access to a card of an obliging friend or relative in the USA or Europe), you can skip the rest of this article and get on with reading the ads. This credit card business rules out virtually every aspirant in India, thanks to our government's rigid foreign exchange policy. Booo!

The Bill, please:

Compuserve has two billing methods - the Standard and the Alternate Billing Plan. Under the former, you pay a fixed charge of $8.95 per month for the use of certain basic items, such as Electronic Mail, some reference areas and areas included under the Standard Plan. Provided you utilise only these services, your Compuserve bill will be $8.95 a month. If you stray outside these areas (as you will, believe me - ALL the interesting forums are outside the Standard Plan), you pay $8.00 per hour while you are in these areas. The Alternate Plan has no fixed charges per month, but you pay $12.80 per hour online. Unless you specify otherwise, you will be billed under the Standard Plan when you join, and there should be little reason for you to change that. If you are accessing via the ZiffNet gateway, you pay and additional $2.50 per month under either plan. Some areas on Compuserve are "Premium Services" that carry an additional charge. For example, you pay $1.50 per magazine article that you request from the Magazine Database. Finally, if your credit card is not issued by a bank in USA (for example, if it is issued by a bank in Europe), then addition $10 per month will appear on your bill to cover international transaction charges. Please note that all these are Compuserve's usage charges - the factor not covered under this is your communications charge, i.e. your phone bill if you call direct ISD (Rs.1.10 per second), or your INET/GPSS bill (Rs.200/64KB plus Rs.4 per minute). And these charges are the ones that are really going to drive you bankrupt! The recent hike in Indian Telecom Tariff doesn't help, either.

You're on!

OK, assuming that you now have a Compuserve account of your own, let's see what we can find there. Before you go online, a word of caution - time is money. Turn on your communication software's capture facility (Alt-F1 in Procomm, Alt-L in Telix, Escape/CA ON in Crosstalk). Don't spend your time reading online, let it all flow into the capture file, then log off and read it at leisure. A good way of keeping your bills down, even if you are calling a BBS. Like I said earlier, Compuserve works more or less like your local BBS. But this "BBS" is much more than a single line host running in someone's home or office. At any time, you'll find hundreds and thousands of users from across the planet online with you. Make the "mistake" of asking for a list of available forums (specific interest areas), and you'll be treated to a list of hundreds of such areas, ranging from Apple Computer Support through Human Sexuality down to Zen and The Art of MotorCycling. (An uptodate list is available on my BBS, call in and pick up CISAREAS.ZIP from the PCQ or COM forum libraries). In the list, you'll find virtually every computer oriented organisation worth its salt, including IBM, Microsoft, Lotus, Novell, Borland, Apple, NeXT, TurboPower, and many, many more. Compuserve's Electronic Mail facility is also very powerful, allowing you to send mail to not only Compuserve users, but also to other networks, such as most Internet sites, MCI Mail, many X.400 services such as AT&T Mail, and more. You can also send fax and telex messages worldwide. Massive databases are at your disposal, including the Official Airlines Guide (OAG), online encyclopedias, magazine databases that contain virtually EVERY article published in the past 10 years, and many more. An online "chat" area called the CB (Citizen's Band) simulator allows you 40 channels that you can access to "talk" live with thousands of people on as many subjects. One of the most interesting areas for first time CIS users is an area called IBMFF (or MACFF if you are a Macintosh user). This area catalogs the hundreds or thousands of files that are available in the CIS forums. Search on a keyword for something that is of interest of you, and you are bound to come up with at least a couple of choices. Try the keyword "shareware" and you are going to get flooded - most of the files available on CIS are either free or shareware.

Foraging in Forums:

When I first joined Compuserve, it was primarily for the use of its E-Mail services, but soon I was seduced into hopping outside the scope of my Standard Plan's "Basic Services" and go scouting around in the forums. Being a software developer, the first forums that caught my attention were the developer support forums of Borland, IBM and Microsoft. Each of these companies maintains five to ten forums on Compuserve to service various aspects of their activities. For example, Borland has the BPASCAL (Borland Pascal), BCPPDOS (Borland C++ under DOS), BORAPP (Borland Applications) and dBASE forums, amongst others. Each forum is again divided into "sections", with each section dealing with various sub-topics. For example, the BPASCAL forum has "From Borland", "TurboVision", "Windows Programming", "Vintage Pascal", etc. Each section, in turn, has a message and a library section. The libraries are the ones that are going to catch you attention when you first come in through the door - thousands of vendor and user supplied files! If you are human, you are probably going to try and download every item in sight, and this will probably continue until you get your first CIS and Phone/GPSS/INET bill, at which point you will spend a lot of time trying to pay the latter, foregoing less important things like food, water and shelter. After you have got past you initial "download frenzy", turn your attention to the messages posted in forums, because this is where the true value of Compuserve lies.

The Soul of Compuserve:

"How do I...", "What is...", "Where can I find..." Questions, questions. And each one is likely to get a dozen answers, from vendors, users or bystanders. Almost immediately. Yes, this is really where Compuserve shines. The forum message sections. This is where you go when you have a problem. Post your question, and you are likely to be inundated with answers. Try getting the same effect by calling you local vendor for support. What a contrast! The soul of Compuserve is its users, and the fact that they are always ready to help out, no matter how arcane, complex or silly your problem may be. People spend their time and money helping YOU, a person they have never met before, a complete stranger. No "Indian Crabs" syndrome here. One of my first attempts at getting help on Compuserve was when I ran into a problem with Turbo Pascal 6.0 - one of my libraries simply stopped functioning when I switched from TP 5.5 to 6.0. I posted my problem in the Pascal forum, and "went home". When I logged in later that day, I had dozens of replies, complete with explanations, sample code and pointers to further references, all supplied by users from across the face of planet Earth. If I would have tried to solve the matter myself, I would have spent days, if not weeks or months, trying to resolve the issue. But via Compuserve, my problem was cleared up in under a day. As a matter of fact, the first replies had started pouring in within minutes of my posting the question! This phenomenon is not unique. On Compuserve, every user logging in is a potential support person. It may be that the user had faced a problem before and got an answer, and now he or she, in turn, does his "good deed for the day" by helping you out when you face the same problem. The willingness of Compuserve users to help is incredible! Lord Baden Powell (founder of the Boy Scout movement) would have approved, and would have definitly been a Compuserve user.

Getting the most out of Compuserve:

Compuserve (and INET/GPSS/P&T) make their money out of your presence online - the longer you stay on, the more you pay. In my first few months on Compuserve, I used to regularly rack up around $200-$300 a month, because I was going around doing things manually. Today, my average Compuserve charge per month is about $40-$70, yet I am doing more online than ever before. How do I achieve this ? Simple - I use an automated program to do all the scanning, downloading, posting and reading for me. This program is another pointer at the attitude of Compuserve users. OzCIS (as the program is called), is a "gift" from Steve Sneed, a TurboPower programmer, to Compuserve users - a massive, comprehensive and easy to use program that does almost everything for you automatically, spending the least possible time online. And here is the miracle - it is completely free. Yes, not even shareware - it is free! OzCIS works by accepting all message and file requests from you before you call, then goes online, does all the work, then logs off and lets you savour the results. It is very reliable, and is the "navigator" of choice by thousands of Compuserve users. On Compuserve, it bypasses menus and works in command mode, and option available on Compuserve. Since no menus are used, less characters flow down the line, further lowering your bill. (OzCIS is also available on my BBS. Go to the COM forum and download OZCIS1.ZIP, OZCIS2.ZIP, OZCIS3.ZIP, OZCIS4.ZIP and OZTOOLS.ZIP. The last file contains some utilities and scripts written by me for Indian OzCIS users to make it work properly with INET and GPSS. Like OzCIS, they are also completely free). Compuserve itself offers a program called CIM (Compuserve Information Manager), but it is slow, and favours Compuserve, i.e. it tries to keep you online as long as possible. Though quite easy to use, I wouldn't recommend it to Indian users. CIM is a commercial product available from Compuserve, and costs about $50. A Windows version has also been recently made available. Yet another Compuserve navigator is TAPCIS, the first of such programs. Though essentially similar to OzCIS in operation, it has a pretty outdated interface and can be quite beastly at times. Besides, it doesn't work with GPSS or INET. It is shareware, and costs $79 on registration. All the above programs are for DOS and require a hard disk and DOS 3.3 or later, with 640 KB RAM except OzCIS, which works only on 80286/386/486 based machines with 1 MB RAM. All of them are supported online on Compuserve in their own forums. Similar programs are also available for the Macintosh, so Niyam and Ajay (and PKR, of late ) get your hackles down.

Logging off:

OK, OK, I know that I am out of space again. But before I log off, I would like to say that if you can manage to get access to Compuserve, then you will never regret it. If you ever run into a problem, send me E-Mail (my Compuserve ID is 70620,563) and I'll try and help. Next month, I will cover a few more online services, including BIX (The Byte Information Exchange), British Telecom Gold and MCI Mail. Oh, and before I forget, here is the command for disconnecting from Compuserve: Bye