| Why MSN is
smarter than AOL |
David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Monday, Jan. 12, 2004 |
|
Writing about the big online services
is harder than it used to be. There's so much to them these days that they
dramatically change in appearance depending on where you're sitting.
I'M THINKING ABOUT this because, last week at CES, with help
from Jay Leno, Bill Gates introduced a new version
of MSN. Also known as MSN 9, it consists of a redesign of the free MSN.com, plus
MSN
Premium, a for-pay superset of services and software optimized for
broadband.
That introduction only underscored the reason I don't
normally write about MSN: To an even greater degree than Yahoo or AOL, it's hard
to say exactly what it is. Depending on how you look at it, MSN is a community,
a Web portal, a mailbox, a set of applications, an instant messaging
client...and the list goes on.
One thing MSN doesn't apparently want to be is an ISP.
Sure, for $21.95 a month, you can get an MSN dial-up account. But Microsoft
would rather sell a $9.95 per month (or $99.95 per year) service to people who
already have their own ISPs. Verizon and Qwest DSL customers, for example, will
now get MSN Premium as part of their service.
Compare that to AOL, which still very much wants to be
your ISP. That's not surprising considering the company's huge network of
dial-in telephone nodes. Yes, you can subscribe to AOL without the dial-up
service if you have your own Internet connection. But--with AOL frequently
described as the Internet with training wheels--I don't know why you would.
As for the online service itself, the revised MSN.com
includes 150 customizable modules for users to choose from, including things
like the ability to link to eBay auctions.
BUT THAT ISN'T really where Bill & Co. are
putting their energies. Instead, MSN is putting a lot of effort into becoming an
Internet enhancement--rather than a replacement. MSN wants to take services like
e-mail, which ISPs offer for free with your Internet connection, and make them
worth paying for.
For example, MSN Premium gives you up to 11 e-mail
addresses, enough for a family with multiple aliases or even a small business.
MSN Premium mail is filtered through the same (excellent) spam filter
that Outlook 2003 uses. In fact, the filter was designed for and first
implemented on MSN. Premium customers get 25MB of online mail storage. The MSN
client--a specialized version of Internet Explorer--will also download other POP
mail.
There's an Outlook plug-in as well, which allows you to
see your MSN mail, calendar, and address book alongside your Outlook mail and
calendar. You can drag and drop calendar items from one calendar to the other.
This looks like an excellent option for people who don't want to mix their work
and personal lives. That capability alone may be worth the price of admission.
MSN Premium also includes full versions of McAfee
antivirus and firewall software for your PC. AOL charges extra for light
versions of this software. And MSN offers an innovative Pop-up Guard, which
works much like the spam filter, looking at the content and source of the pop-up
window before deciding whether to let it through or not. This makes it less
likely to "break" sites that use pop-ups for their own content.
MUCH OF THE functionality of Microsoft's
stand-alone consumer digital photography software is also included with MSN
Premium, so you won't need a standalone photo-editing and organization product.
And you get something that only an online service can offer: the ability to send
thumbnail photos in e-mail. Those tiny images then link to the full-sized images
stored on MSN; click on the thumbnail and the larger image appears on your
screen.
This means you can send a whole mess of images by e-mail
without worrying that the message will become too large to send or take too long
to download. The uploaded images remain stored online for a month and are only
stored once, so when you send the same image to someone else you don't have to
upload it again.
MSN Premium also includes MSN Money and the Encarta
encyclopedia, with added features including math tutoring up to a high school
level. There are also parental control features.
Even if you aren't using the MSN client, you can have its
customizable dashboard on your desktop. In addition to serving as your MSN IM
client, that dashboard also manages a variety of alerts, including mail,
weather, and traffic.
According to MS, the various software elements included in
MSN Premium would, if paid for separately, cost more than $350. Of course, if
you bought the apps you would own them. On the other hand, you wouldn't get
upgrades, so do the math yourself.
Now, I won't attempt a point-by-point comparison between
the latest versions of MSN and AOL. And I wouldn't say MSN is better than AOL,
even if I thought it was; I could only say it might be better for particular
uses or customers. But, thanks to its integration of all that Microsoft code, I
do think MSN is smarter.
Charles Mims
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