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Prices are not cheap. The Source charges customers a one-time sign-up fee of $100, plus a monthly minimum of $10, whether the system is used or not. Additional "online" fees can be anywhere from $4.25 to $30 an hour, depending upon the time of day and the nature of the information requested. CompuServe requires an initial sign-up fee of $19.95, but fees for on-line usage during business hours are higher than the Source's.
Before he can communicate with a data bank, a subscriber needs either a personal computer, which can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $8,000, or one of the much less expensive electronic keyboards that retail in hobby shops for under $400. There is a serious drawback to the keyboards, though. While cheaper to buy, they often wind up being more expensive to use. Reason: keyboards lack computer memory power, and thus can communicate with data banks only at the pace of the human typing information into the machine, which is fairly slow by computer standards.
In contrast, personal computers can be preprogrammed to ask questions before they are ever connected to data banks. Moreover, once connected, via a toll-free call over a household telephone line, the personal computers can transmit requests for data at superfast speeds. This can cut a subscriber's on-line usage from hours to minutes, or even seconds, at a time, resulting in huge savings in monthly bills. Says Marshall Graham, president of the Source: "Our equipment is constantly in operation, but the average bill to our customers is no more than about $25 per month."
Though total subscribers to both the Source and CompuServe now number fewer than 27,000, the Source alone expects to have 20 times that many on-line customers within three years. Meanwhile, a number of other companies, including CBS, Warner Amex, Cox Broadcasting and Time Inc., are working to bring similar services into the home via so-called interactive cable-television systems. Such systems would use a television cable instead of a telephone line to transmit the data, and permit viewers to extract information by means of specially modified television sets equipped with keyboards. Tests are now under way with cable subscribers in San Diego, Columbus, Dallas and elsewhere. Whatever the actual transmission technology, it seems that people are becoming increasingly hungry for the information wizardry that computers are bringing about, especially now that the magic can be brought right into the home.
— By Christopher Byron.
Reported by Christopher Redman/ Detroit