Subj : Re: BBS Population, DWeb, Re_AOL
To   : Spectre
From : boraxman
Date : Thu Oct 20 2022 22:51:04

 Sp>  bo> I joined up back in 2000, or 1999, and I got a CD with a dialer.  But
 Sp>  bo> dialer didn't connect to a specific portal.  Many ISP's I recall did 
 Sp> 
 Sp> You'd have to go back to about ~93-95 somewhere to see AOL offerings.

Ahh, I was still in school then, and only had heard of the Internet.  That's "Before my time" so to speak, at least in an online context, so that explains why I didn't really come across it.

 Sp>  bo> At the time, Netspace was quite good (always was actually).  It was
 Sp> 
 Sp> Never used them myself, but I have a friend that has stuck with them
 Sp> since they moved to the ISP model and did tech work for them in the past.
 Sp> 
 Sp> In the circles I moved, the CD's were pretty common, and I saw a lot of
 Sp> people use the 30 day free trial, but as mentioned their interface was
 Sp> heavily locked down, and restrictive.  You could only connect with a
 Sp> Windoze system from memory, couldn't share the link on a network, were
 Sp> largely limited to the applications they provided.  I don't recall
 Sp> seeing anyone that actually signed on to continue using them beyond the
 Sp> trial period.
 Sp> 

I deliberately put up with a broadband connection for years in order to stay with them.  Customer service back in the Netspace days was second to none, and in 1999, they were one of the fastest ISP's. 

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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