Source:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/04/169220/AOL-Shuts-Down-CompuServe"After 30 years, CompuServe is all but dead, as AOL has pulled the plug on the once-great company. The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, provided its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major online service. CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic (as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail system, but the software that the service was built on has been shut down. Tellingly, the current version of the service's client software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999."
Compuserve itself hasn't been it's true self for many, many years but it brings a bit of sadness to see that it has been fully un-plugged. I purchased my first 300bps modem for my Commodore64 way back in the day and the first thing I did was to dial up Compuserve. Not knowing what local long distance was my parents got a $600.00 phone bill that month that I had to take the rest of the summer to pay back but back then it was worth it. Logging on to Compuserve allowed me to explore and learn more about computers, programming and my beloved C64 then any book or magazine could ever teach me. It was real people posting real world examples and why those examples worked which was a lot better then the 400 page programming book that the Commodore64 came with or magazines like Compute, Byte etc that just posted the programs themselves or the machine instructions. Because I couldn't afford to keep calling Compuserve it led me to the discovery and listings of B.B.S. that were in my calling area. It was all down hill from there, logging into all the local bbs's to creating my own bbs to creating my first online door game.
More then 10 years after that first experience I turned to Compuserve once again to boost sales of some shareware titles that I had created. Compuserve at that point had stepped up a knotch and processed payments for shareware titles it hosted, of course they took a nice processing fee, but hey it was one more place to gain sales and back then there were so few. The WWW was alive and kicking but the Compuserve/AOL's still had a bigger reach then the WWW.
And with that R.I.P. Compuserve, it was a great time while it lasted and I will never forget you
