Comments on: CompuServe Classic is shutting down

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:39:33 +0000

The end of an era, wow!

My dad had a CompuServe account, back during the late-80s and early 90s. I used it… a lot…

And then when I worked up enough of a bill (£3/hour or something insane, and then the telephone bill on top of that?) I would switch to BBSes and the Void MUD (I’m probably the youngest old-school MUDer around…)

Void was still something like 12p/minute… ugh. I hate to be reminded of the bills I racked up back in the day…

My dad was actually paying his monthly subscription to CompuServe until about 5 years ago — he forgot to cancel it. Hah.

By: heartless_

heartless_ — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:45:34 +0000

Services such as CompuServe or selling Dial-up internet service is pretty much a “gravy train” for larger companies like AOL. That is why so many of them are in such poor shape. The technology is dead cheap to maintain and requires literally no support, so it gets back shelved and is almost 100% profit. Why do you think major ISPs still sell dial up? Because it costs them almost nothing! Same goes for CompuServe for AOL.

By: Wendelius

Wendelius — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:57:32 +0000

I remember Compuserve very well. Those were the first communities I really got involved with. I still play or talk daily nowadays with people I met on the Gamers’ Forum back in the early 90ies. And some of the friends I made on the SFLit forum (we were known as IMPs from “Informal Association of Writers IMPatiently Waiting To Be Published “) are now published and respected sci-fi and fantasy authors.

The communities on CServe were mature and you would meet “celebrities” in many of the forae. Some days, I also miss the forum moderation from those happy days.

Even when CServe went web based, I stuck with the Classic client as long as I could. It was a much better experience.

By: Adrian Lopez

Adrian Lopez — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:59:15 +0000

I had (or have, somewhere) a printed directory of CompuServe’s services from the 1990′s, but I never got a chance to use it. CompuServe was just way too expensive.

By: We Fly Spitfires

We Fly Spitfires — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:20:19 +0000

I remember CompuServe. I used it before I even knew what the Iternet was or anything about Google. Awesome stuff.

By: nonobadkitty

nonobadkitty — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:17:03 +0000

Wow I didn’t know CompuServe was still around at all, but it was CompuServe which got me online back in the early 1990′s and I still have online friends that I met in those forums back then. Ah, the good old days of the internet, when content was king hehe. Thankfully internet access is a lot cheaper now, I dreaded those $300 or higher monthly bills I racked up back then. I guess this means I can finally dump my old OzWin forum software floppy disks now too (not that I’ve used them in ages, but I keep them for nostalgia’s sake.) I have a lot of good memories of good old CompuServe though. I’m not sure what CompuServe 2000 is, if it’s the “web based” version of CompuServe they tried to roll out in the late 1990′s then, well … that was the reason I left CompuServe and went to a “regular” ISP back then.