I remember around the time CompuServe bought The Source, CIS was charging based on the speed of your connection (I think $12.80/hr was for a 9600 baud connection). There were several products to minimize your online time that would script connections - go to your favorite forums, download new messages, post anything you had pending, and hang up.
When AOL came on the scene, they eventually overtook the old walled-garden players by tactics like providing access to Usenet and the web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September was an unfortunate fallout from that), and provided a much cheaper pricing model. CIS tried to catch up by buying the Spry company, using its browser (basically a branded NCSA Mosaic), releasing scripts for Trumpet Winsock to get to the net from a CompuServe x.25 trunk, and added the option to use that same net connection to telnet back into CompuServe.
It was confusing, caused too much network traffic, and CompuServe mismanaged it all, and ultimately collapsed, to be bought out by AOL... who eventually lost relevance outside of the chat universe.
I remember around the time CompuServe bought The Source, CIS was charging based on the speed of your connection (I think $12.80/hr was for a 9600 baud connection). There were several products to minimize your online time that would script connections - go to your favorite forums, download new messages, post anything you had pending, and hang up.
When AOL came on the scene, they eventually overtook the old walled-garden players by tactics like providing access to Usenet and the web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September was an unfortunate fallout from that), and provided a much cheaper pricing model. CIS tried to catch up by buying the Spry company, using its browser (basically a branded NCSA Mosaic), releasing scripts for Trumpet Winsock to get to the net from a CompuServe x.25 trunk, and added the option to use that same net connection to telnet back into CompuServe.
It was confusing, caused too much network traffic, and CompuServe mismanaged it all, and ultimately collapsed, to be bought out by AOL... who eventually lost relevance outside of the chat universe.
Good times, good times.