European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 18, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes computers tuesday january 18,1994 really getting yourself hooked on line services offer news games even new friends by Michael j. Himow1tz the Baltimore Sun if you bought a computer or Modem within the last year you probably found yourself unwrapping a lot of literature and sometimes even software designed to lure you into the electronic Lair of one of America s three giant on line information services. Prodigy America online and Compuserve Are scrambling for your business and thanks to new software that takes the voodoo out of telecommuting americans Are responding to the on line Call in re Cord numbers. By various pre Holiday counts almost 4 million people subscribed to the big three and a variety of smaller services. Given the number of Christmas computers sold this year with try me out on line software i would t be surprised if their numbers swelled significantly Over the next few months. Still i get a lot of questions from users who Are confused about the hype. So Here is a Little explanation. Available with a local phone Call in most areas of the country and in some parts of european line information services can take you to a virtual smorgasbord of news information features weather reports games bulletin boards restaurant reviews Stock Market services travel information shopping galleries airline reservations encyclopedias magazines newspapers downloadable soft Ware and hundreds of other services. Almost every week you la find some thing new. More important these services can put you in touch with other people lots of them. If your spouse is tired of talking poli tics you can argue on line with thou Sands of die hard republicans democrats socialists libertarians utilitarians vegetarians they re All out there. You can Send electronic mail to a Cor respondent across the Street or Halfway around the world. Or you can join a real time Chat with one two or a dozen other users simultaneously. With a new Plugge Dmn administration in Washington you can even Send a letter to the president without Licking a stamp. If you need help with some obscure in ". Deavor chances Are you can find it online. Software publishers use on line serv ices to deliver technical support and you la find plenty of regular users with computer expertise who Are Happy to answer your questions. But on line services Aren t just meeting grounds for computer Hacks any More. Groups with a wide variety of interests use them to Exchange information Opin ions and help. Over the years and i be been log Ging on to various services for a decade now i be found plenty. For example last year my older son was working on a science project involving grape juice stains and laundry deter gents. To measure How Welt the detergents cleaned a stained White cloth he needed an ambient Light meter. I Learned that this differs from your Ordinary Light meter because it measures the Light that Falls on an object rather than the Light reflected from it. You Don t find these in every photographer s Gadget bag. Nobody i knew had one. .".-.,-. I took one look at the prices in the photo Cata logs and asked my son if he is Susan Harris would t mind switching to another Sci ence project like growing a few bean plants. But he was insistent so i logged on to Compuserve s photography forum and left a message asking if anyone knew where i could find an ambient Light meter cheap. The next night i found a reply from a kind user who told me to look on Page 22 of the radio Shack Engineer s mini notebook cat. 276-5012. Yes he supplied the Catalon number and Page i went to the Shack found the mini notebook and sure enough there was a diagram for an ambient meter that was easy to assemble and cheap. So i bought the part about $20 Worth arid persuaded the clerk to show me How to put them together. I m not a hardware kind of Guy but my son and i had it assembled in an hour. To my amazement the meter worked like a Charm and the science project was a Suc Cess ". Last summer my wife and i had a Cou ple of weeks without the kids for the first time in a decade and decided to take advantage of it with a Little splurge. Our travel agent suggested a cruise and we picked a ship called the dream Ward that looked great in the color Bro Chures. Of course All Ocean liners look great in the brochures and this was a relatively new ship. Our agent did t know anyone who had sailed on it. So i logged on again found a cruise Section in the travel forum s Library and conducted a search for the keyword dream Ward. It turned up three reviews two from travel magazines and one from a user who had just spent a week on Board. They were All favourable and had useful tips on choosing Cabins and dining rooms. We had a wonderful vacation. Then there was the time the new mulch around my House blossomed with patches of the most disgusting yellow butt Gus i d Ever seen. We re talking major league Yuk Here. The gardeners in the neighbourhood had never seen anything like it. My knowledge of fungicides was limited to occasional applications of dese nex so i found an on line gardening forum and left a message describing the mess. The next night there were three replies telling me i was the proud owner of a Flower bed full of slime Mold the cure for which was dry weather. Sure enough when the weather cleared up so did the Yukky stuff. When it came time to Trade in the old station Wagon i decided to look for a minivan. Test drives were Fine but i wanted More information. So i logged on found Back issues of consumer reports and quickly located the minivan reviews. I could have done the same thing at the Library but this took three minutes instead of an hour were these problems earthshaking hardly. But i would have gone to a lot More trouble or expense to solve them without the help i received online. Of course there Are a couple of catches to All of this. One is the Cost. No matter How Good the introductory prices look you la always find yourself spending More than you planned it May be Worth it to you but it s a fac Tor to consider. The other catch is that not every serv ice will have everything you want. And you May find one service much easier to use than another depending on your interests. Tandy of expand electronic retailing by new times news fort Worth Tex. The Tandy corp., moving to expand its presence in electronics re tailing rapidly after shedding its manufacturing operations last year said that it plans to open 30 computer and consumer electronics superstore Sand hire about 3,600 employees this year. The company which is based Here said it would add 24 new stores to its 40-store computer City computer retail Chain beginning in March. It also plans to triple the number of its incredible universe consumer electronics and computer stores adding six new outlets to its three existing stores in Dallas Arlington Tex and Portland Ore. Tandy declined to disclose the new compute City locations except to say they would be in major markets. The company plans to open an incredible universe store in Miami in february and in Phoenix in the second Quarter but would not disclose other locations. Analysts noted that the sweeping divestiture program by the company which included the june Sale of its personal computer manufacturing business to ast re search inc., will leave it with no debt and ample resources to open new stores. This could be the year of cd rom As prices titles and technology unite by Steve Lour the new York times from interactive adventure games like aet Ivision s return to Zork to the film clips and reviews of Microsoft s Cine mania 94," cd rom titles Are finally creating excitement and sales. And the Silvery disks do Promise a Sharp break with the nerds Only tradition of the computer Industry soft Ware that is intended to be fun to use. This year software on cd rom Short for compact disc read Only memory will really Start to become a mass Market. Three forces Are working together the falling prices and rising production of personal computers equipped  drives the increased number of cd rom titles and the technology s ability to deliver High Quality video sound and text at once. In 1994, 35 percent of All personal computers sold in the United states will have built in cd rom drives up from 4 percent two years ago and 19 percent in 1993, forecasts link resources a consulting firm. The new sales will help raise the number of computers equipped with cd rom readers by 54 percent to More than 10 million according to inf tech a Market research firm. The number of titles in print will Rise by More than 30 percent to More than 9,400, inf tech says. So 1994 May be the year when americans really get educated about cd rom said Philip Bishop editor of the Bishop report newsletter. So what will they learn one thing is the Power of this storage technology cd rom. It enables the computer to deliver movie like images instead of the Jerky cartoons of conventional compute games. It also allows a Basic level of  the user of an multimedia encyclopedia for in stance is Able to move from text to video to ask questions and receive answers. The business Issue is whether Consumers after being enticed to buy will be dazzled by the 1994 version of cd rom. Denise Caruso of Friday holdings l.p., an investor in new Media ventures is sceptical. A lot of people will be disappointed by cd rom she said. It s still time consuming and difficult to use and most of the software in t that