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* Posts by G Thomas

2 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2009

Bonking payment by NFC doubled by Olympics splash

G Thomas

What a bunch of luddites!

Well I have 3 NFC cards and think they are brilliant. Of course I have an Oyster card. My bus pass is also NFC. I buy my lattes and lunch almost every day in shops using my NFC debit card. The latter is, I suppose, the 'proper' NFC card with the little symbol on it. I got mine via the O2 Wallet system, the easiest way I found to get one without having to take out a new bank accout or get a new credit card. I can put as much or as little as I want on the card, I get a txt msg every time I use it telling me how much I have spent and how much I have left and of course there is a limit to the maximum you can spend in one transaction. Topping it up is fairly easy, although the O2 Wallet system requires me to remember 2 passwords, and my verified by visa password (so that's 3 passwords then) which is a bit OTT.

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CompuServe signs off

G Thomas
Unhappy

Compuserve was great back then.....

Compuserve was indeed great in its heyday. I remember the magazine and the stories about how Compuserve had improved someone's life, saved their business etc. I used DOSCIM (what were the commands to view message threads, 'back', 'up', 'home'?) and then the magic of the Windows version, WinCIM. They also had points of presence (local phone numbers) in various cities around the world, so if you travelled you could still dial in using a local-ish number. There were many forums (fora?), and some of them were actually useful. You could also have your own website before most people knew what a website was, and they even had a little wizard to help you publish your website.

I joined Compuserve in December 1992 and I still have the first email I ever sent, to a friend in Australia (to whom I commented 'I've recently signed up with CompuServe and have just realised that I can send mail to your Internet address that I so carefully noted...') aah, the things we take for granted these days. They have made the transition off their Compuserve platform painless, you can still keep your Compuserve email account and they are now providing this for free.

An important piece of personal computing history, I think.

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