The Portal System's Amiga Zone the AFFORDABLE alternative for online Amiga information. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Are you spending a fortune to download files and get Amiga information from the "big name" commercial services? Do you feel ripped off and abused every time you have to pay $12 or $18 or even $23 an hour on those systems? Did you just buy a shiny new high-speed modem and find out you're going to have to take out a second mortgage to use your favorite information service at 9600bps? Well, you do NOT have to go broke getting your Amiga goodies online. You don't have to log on and feel so rushed to do everything quickly, to avoid enormous monthly billings. For a fraction of what you pay other services you can join a one that not only has THE BEST online Amiga support but is connected to the entire industrialized world. You can download for hours on end at high speed without having that sword of financial ruin hanging over your head. Read on! The Portal Online System is the home of acclaimed Amiga Zone, which was formerly on the People/Link System. Plink went out of business in May 1991 and The Amiga Zone's staff moved to Portal the next day. The Zone has just celebrated its first anniversary on Portal. The Amiga press has consistantly raved about The Amiga Zone, when compared to its competition. (Quotes available upon request). The Amiga Zone is run by Harv Laser, Dan James, Steve Tibbett, Bill Seymour, Oran J. Sands III, Steve Gillmor, Steve Worley, Kermit Woodall and Kevin Davidson. Portal Communications of Cupertino, CA., right in the heart of the Silicon Valley, is a well-established business with an excellent reputation and solid financial footing. The Portal Online System runs on Portal's network of over two dozen Sun Workstations. These are modern, state-of-the-art computers, not some stodgy old antiquated mainframes. New disks drives and modems can be added to Portal quickly and at far lower cost than on services who use old mainframe systems. This means Portal can expand their services and their hardware quickly and easily. If you live in the San Jose, CA area, then you can dial Portal direct. If you live elsewhere, you can reach Portal through any SprintNet (formerly Telenet) "indial" node anywhere in the U.S.A. or through Tymnet from anywhere in North America. If you have an account on a university or commercial or military Internet-connected system, you can connect to Portal using their UNIX Telnet or Rlogin programs, from anywhere in the industrialized world. Portal is a UNIX system but you don't need to have any working knowledge of UNIX to use The Portal Online system. It's completely menu-driven, and offers a set of easy-to-use commands (with built in "help" functions) which are always visible on your screen while you're online. The Portal Online System insulates you from the complexities of a UNIX "shell" account. However, your Portal account also includes a UNIX shell account if you desire to have one. Just ask for it at the time you set up your account. Your account on Portal is extremely configurable. You can use the system in simple "TTY" mode or set yourself up for ANSI/VT100 emulation. You can modify Portal's appearance on your screen in dozens of ways. Here are some of Portal/Amiga Zone's noteworthy features: - Over 1 GIGabytes of Amiga-specific files, now online, 24 hours a day. Portal has dedicated a 1.6 GIGabyte disk drive to the Amiga Zone. We have unlimited space for files and new uploads. Whenever that drive fills up, we'll add another one! This means we can keep files online virtually forever. You don't have to feel rushed to download older files for fear they may be deleted to make room for new ones. Files and messages can be of any length. No need to split up a large file to upload it. No need to split up a long message before you post it. - PLUS.. The Fred Fish Disk collection of freely distributable software, online 24 hours a day. Every Disk. All of them. Old disks are never deleted. Thousands of files. You can download only a couple files or a whole disk at a time, your choice. Whether you want Fish Disk #1 or #760, or anything in between, we have it online NOW. New Fish disks arrive constantly as Fish releases them. Other services with limited disk space can't offer this vast resource to its customers. Portal can and does. - Fast, Batch Zmodem file transfer protocol. Download up to 100 files at once, of any size, with one command. Zmodem is a recoverable transfer protocol. What this means to you is that if you ever lose your modem connection to Portal during a download, you can log back in, download the same file, and it'll pick up right where it left off! NO need to start over again. - 20 Amiga vendor areas with participants like AmigaWorld, ASDG, Soft-Logik, Black Belt, Apex Publishing, Stylus, Prolific, NES, and many others including Compute's Amiga Resource with over 4 Megabytes of exclusive Compute magazine disk stuff you won't find elsewhere. - 35 "regular" Amiga libraries with thousands of files. Hot new stuff arrives daily. Since Portal has FTP connections we can get a new program online within MINUTES of its being announced on Usenet. - No upload/download "ratios" EVER. Download as much as you want, as often as you want, and never feel pressued doing it. Start downloading files with your first session on Portal. - Live, interactive nightly chats with Amiga folks whose names you will recognize. Special conferences. Random chance prize contests. Get your questions answered fast and don't pay a fortune for it. One recent (Nov. 1992) Wednesday evening's Graphics chat found Allen Hastings, Eric "DrGandalf" Fleischer, Steve Worley, Bradley "BWS" Schenck, all chatting with other Amiga Zone users at the same time. Famous Amiga folks aren't the exception on Portal, they're the norm. - Message bases galore where you can ask questions about *anything* Amiga related and get quick replies from the experts. - Amiga Internet mailing lists for Imagine, DCTV, LightWave and HyperAmi are ported right into the Zone message bases. You can read months worth of postings. They don't scroll off, ever! No need to clutter your mailbox with them. - FREE unlimited Internet email. Your Portal account gets you a mailbox. Send letters of any length to computer users in the entire industrialized world. No limit. No extra charges. No kiddin! Portal email has some amazing features: you can even run a mail session "inside" another mail session to send blind carbon copies for example. Grab Usenet articles and store copies in your mailbox. Email a program to a friend in Australia or Sweden or just about anywhere. - The USENET hierachy of thousands of "newsgroups" in which you can read and post articles about virtually any subject you can possibly imagine. Usenet feeds into Portal many times each hour. There are 14 Amiga-specific Usenet newsgroups with hundreds of articles posted every day, including postings by Commodore personnel. Since Usenet is distributed worldwide, your questions and answers can be seen by literally hundreds of thousands of people the same day you post it. - Other Portal SIGs (Special Interest Groups) online for Mac, IBM, Sun, NeXT, UNIX, Science Fiction, Writers, amateur radio, and a graphics SIG with thousands of GIF files to name but a few. ALL Portal SIGs are accessible to ALL Portal customers with NO surcharges ever. - The entire UPI/Clarinet/Newsbytes news hierarchy ($4/month extra) This optional package gets you headline news, bulletins, stories, features, sports, weather, and computer industry news and press releases fed into Portal many times each week. Stay on top of the worldwide computer industry without having to wait for a weekly paper to arrive. - Now Open: an exciting and unique package of Internet goodies: IRC, FTP, TELNET, MUDS, LIBS. Free to all Portal customers with your account. Internet Services is a menu driven version of the same kinds of utilities you can also use from your UNIX shell account. All the files you can FTP. All the chatting you can stand on the IRC. And on IRC you can chat live, in real time with Amiga users in the U.K., Europe, Australia, the Far East! Portal's Internet Services opens up the entire world to you. Those expensive competing systems don't, can't, and probably won't ever offer these features. - NOW RELEASED!: PortalX by Steve Tibbett, our graphical "front end" for Portal which will let you automatically click'n'download your waiting email, messages, Usenet groups and binary files! Reply to mail and messages offline using your favorite editor and your replies are sent automatically the next time you log into Portal. This exciting shareware program is written by Steve Tibbett, one of the most respected names in freely-distributable Amiga software. (PortalX as of Version 1.30, now works no matter how you log into Portal, be it via the X.25 packet switched networks Sprintnet and Tymnet, or if you dial Portal's high speed modem bank directly, or if you log into Portal using the Telnet or RLogin programs from an existing Internet account you have somewhere else. (PortalX requires Workbench 2.04 or higher) How does all that sound? Probably too good to be true. Well.. it's true. You can keep paying those other services their high prices and stay isolated from the world, or you can put that money back in your pocket when you join The Portal System. What're you paying now for your Amiga modem addiction? Check out this rate chart. Verify all the rates shown with each service if you want to. Portal offers the Amiga owner MORE STUFF at a lower price than any of its competitors. The Amiga press raves about Portal and the Amiga Zone. There must be a reason! An eye-opening Comparison of Portal's rates with Genie and CompuServe --------------------------------------------------------------------- Portal Signup or for more information: 1-408-973-9111 (voice) 9a.m.-5p.m. Mon-Fri, Pacific Time 1-408-725-0561 (modem 3/12/2400) 24 hours every day 1-408-973-8091 (modem 9600/14400) 24 hours every day or enter "C PORTAL" from any Sprintnet dial-in in the USA, or enter "portal" from any Tymnet "please log in:" prompt, USA & Canada or telnet to "portal.com" from anywhere. All prices shown are in U.S. Dollars Total Total Total Total Cost Cost Cost Cost Fee 1 hr. 5 hrs. 10 hrs.30 hrs. Service Startup Monthly Per Per per per per Fee Fee Hour month month month month $ $ $ $ $ $ $ Genie 0 4.95 2400bps, non prime 6.00 10.95 34.95 64.95 184.95 2400bps, prime 18.00 22.95 94.95 184.95 544.95 9600bps, non prime 18.00 22.95 94.95 184.95 544.95 9600bps, prime 30.00 34.95 154.95 304.95 904.95 CompuServe 39.95 2.00 2400bps, 24 hrs. 12.80 14.80 66.00 130.00 386.00 9600bps, 24 hrs. 22.80 24.80 116.00 230.00 686.00 Portal 19.95 19.95 2400/9600/14.4Kbps, *direct 24 hrs 0.00 19.95 19.95 19.95 19.95 2400/9600bps nonprime Sprint or Tymnet 2.50 22.95 32.45 44.95 94.95 2400/9600bps prime Sprint +% or Tymnet 5.50-10 29.95 69.95 119.95 varies 2400/9600bps non prime # PCPursuit 1.00 20.95 24.95 29.95 49.95 * plus cost of phone call if out of Portal's local dialing area Direct rates also apply to connections made to Portal using the UNIX "telnet" or "rlogin" programs from an account you may already have on an Internet-connected system. % 9600 bps Sprintnet and Tymnet available in 100 major metro areas + $10 rate prevails at smaller US Cities # PCPursuit is a service of US Sprint. Portal is a PCPursuit "Direct Access Facility" thus connection to Portal with a PCP account is simply a matter of entering C PORTAL,PCP-ID,PCP-PASSWORD at the SprintNet login prompt instead of C PORTAL. Notes: 1. Genie's $4.95/month deal does not include their Amiga areas! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In there, the hourly rates apply. Same goes for CI$' $7.95/month "deal". It doesn't include any of their Amiga areas. Don't be fooled by come-ons and loss-leader "special deals." These are just to sucker you into signup on an expensive system that will charge you outrageous rates when you want to use their Amiga areas. 2. PCPursuit accounts are available directly from Sprintnet: Individual: $30 per month for 30 hours of usage Family : $50 per month for 60 hours of usage Handicap : $30 per month for 90 hours of usage Hourly cost of using Portal via Sprintnet with a PCPursuit account will vary depending on which PCP plan is purchased and how many hours of it are used on Portal each month. PCPursuit is not limited to Portal usage only. Remaining unused hours can be utilized to dial BBSes all over the U.S.A. for $1 per hour, non prime, from ANY city with a Sprintnet indial node. 3. Non Prime time is normally defined as 6:00p.m. to 7:00a.m. the next morning at the local time of the caller, and 24 hours on Saturdays, Sundays, and designated holidays. 4. Portal Direct 9600/14400 bps service is availble for both USR HST modems, and any V32/V32.bis/V42/V42.bis modems. There are 48 direct, high speed lines into Portal. Busy signals are rare! 5. SprintNet 9600bps service is V.32 modem protocol only. Tymnet 9600bps services is V.32 modem protocol only. Again, Portal does NOT surcharge high speed modem users! 6. The cost of using Portal for 30 hours a month assuming a PCPursuit account is utilitized for all 30 hours via SprintNet equals Portal's monthly charge of $19.95 plus the entire cost of the PCP account which is a minimum of $30.00 for a total of $49.95 for 30 hours of Portal usage a month even at 9600bps where available. That's about ONE-TENTH the cost of using Genie at 9600 for 30 hours and ONE-FIFTEENTH the cost of using CI$ at 9600 for 30 hours. These are real numbers, folks. 7. Portal subscribers who already have an account on an Internet-capable system elsewhere, can use that system's "telnet" or "rlogin" programs to connect to Portal for $0.00 an hour. That's right ZERO. From anywhere in the world. If you're in this category, be sure to ask the Portal reps, when you signup, how to login to Portal from your existing Internet account. The numbers don't lie. The basic Portal monthly subscription rate is less money than ONE HOUR of CI$ usage at 9600 baud! Call and join today. Tell the friendly Portal Customer Service rep "The Amiga Zone sent me!" That number again: 1-408-973-9111. Portal Communications accepts MasterCard, Visa, or you can pre-pay any amount by personal check or money order. Sorry, no AmEx or "checkfree" at this time. -end of file-