> AOL offered a lot more than compuserve, genie, delphi, or indeed any of > the other similar services. It had more people, was easier to use than > any of its competitors.
Sure, I don't think there's any question about that. The question (and a trivial indeed) is whether or not it was "cool". As far as the techies were concerned, it wasn't, and part of that was precisely -because- it was easier to use: it was considered to be dumbed-down for the computer-illiterate masses. Not cool like hard-to-use CompuServe, where you had to know what you were doing to get anything accomplished. Even on CIS, you weren't cool if you used the menus. You were only cool if you knew dozens of two- and three-letter commands like "rtn" to read new messages in threaded order. No learning curve = not cool. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
