Review of X*PRESS for Amiga

 

Message-ID: #31517.pnet01.amiga/comp-amiga 21952 chars. (259 more)

From: DrBob@cup.portal.com (Robert A Rethemeyer)

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga

Subject: Review of X*PRESS [LONG]

Date: 31 Aug 90 09:48:15 GMT

Organization: The Portal System (TM)

I recently wrote the following review for my company's Amiga user group.

It describes my impressions of the X*PRESS cable information service.

I've been told that it might be of interest to the net community, so

here it is.  Be forewarned, it is rather long, so if you are not

interested, bail out now.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Bob Rethemeyer                     //"This is obviously some strange

    DrBob@cup.portal.com   -or-     //  usage of the word 'safe' that I hadn't

..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!DrBob //   previously been aware of."  - A. Dent

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

     Description and Review of X*PRESS for the Amiga

        (c) Copyright 1990  Robert Rethemeyer

DISCLAIMER:

  This is  not  an endorsement of X*PRESS or their products.  I have no

affiliation  with  X*PRESS  Information Services, Ltd., other than as a

satisfied  user,  and they do not know I am writing this article.  I am

only  describing  my  experience  and  impressions  of the product as I

understand it.

=======================================================================

I  recently  saw  mention  of  a  company/product/service call X*PRESS.

Briefly  described,  X*PRESS  is  a  one-way  news and information wire

service   distributed   through   television   cable  systems  to  home

computers.   This  idea sounded interesting to me, so I looked into it,

and  eventually purchased it.  It is a strange product in that there is

almost  no  promotion of it to be found.  The service has existed for 5

years,  and  their  Amiga version has been available for 2 years, but I

had  never  heard of it.  As far as I know, neither X*PRESS or my cable

company  advertise the service, and when I called them for information,

all  they  could offer me was a vague description, not even a brochure.

But  it  is  a nice service.  Hopefully I can answer some questions you

may  have about it so that buying it sight-unseen won't be so risky.  I

will go into the intricate details.

What  does  the  service  provide?   I'll  discuss that more below, but

basically   you  get  news  and  business  articles,  weather,  sports,

entertainment   news,  soap  opera  updates,  movie  reviews,  recipes,

education  news,  stock  quotes,  editorials,  and  more.   Even public

domain software for various machines.

How  does  it work?  Apparently X*PRESS broadcasts data in packets over

satellites  which  local  cable  companies  receive  and add into their

cable  signal  to  every household, kind of like cable FM.   The signal

comes  with  your  basic cable service, meaning you pay *nothing* extra

to  your  cable  company  for it.  At your end, you buy the X*PRESS kit

for  your computer.  It includes software specific to your computer and

a  decoder  box  which  connects  between  your  cable and the computer

serial  port at 9600 baud.  The software monitors the incoming packets,

captures  the  info  you  are interested in, and presents it for you to

read, save, or print.

Although  the  software  is available for IBM, Mac, Apple-II, Atari-ST,

and  Amiga,  I  am  only  describing  the  Amiga version, of course.  I

gather  from  reading  some articles that the Amiga version is the best

of  the  lot,  made  possible in part by the multitasking nature of the

Amiga.   I  am  using  it  on  an  Amiga  1000,  so  I don't know about

compatibility with 020/030 machines or AmigaDOS 2.0.

There  are  actually  two  levels  of  service  you  can  buy:  XChange

(basic),  and  Executive.   The  only difference is the Executive gives

you  15-minute  updates  of  stock quotes, versus 3-per-day updates for

the  basic  service.   I  purchased  only  the  basic  service,  but  I

understand there is a monthly charge for the Executive.

X*PRESS  provides  its  service  through approximately 70% of the cable

companies  in the U.S. and Canada.  To find out if yours does, call the

cable  company, or the people at the X*PRESS sales number can also tell

you.

You  order  the  kit  by  phone  directly  from the X*PRESS company for

$108.45  ($99.95 + $8.50 P&H).  This is a one-time charge, then you own

the  kit.   Eight  days  after  I  ordered, it arrived by UPS.  The kit

contains:

      * the decoder box

      * power supply for the decoder (brick-on-the-plug type, yuk)

      * a 1-to-2 cable splitter

      * two 6-foot lengths of coax with connectors

      * an RS-232 cable specific to the computer model

      * the X*PRESS software disk specific to the computer

      * software instructions for the computer model

      * generic installation instructions

There  is  a  30-day  money-back guarantee, but no other warranty I can

find.

The  software  comes  with  a "Read this before using" agreement, which

basically states [my paraphrasing]:

  * You may not redistribute the X*PRESS information in any way,

      to anyone, under any circumstances.  You can manipulate the

      information any way you like, but it must be for your use only.

  * No unauthorized use of services allowed.

  * X*PRESS is not liable for transmission errors, interruptions, etc.

  * No warranties expressed, implied, etc...

Seems reasonable to me.

The  decoder  is  an  "InfoCipher  1000R Data Receiver" made by General

Instrument.   It is a plastic box about 9x9x2 inches.  It has 3 LEDs on

the  front  labeled  Power, Data, and Carrier.  The back has the power,

RS-232,  and  cable  connectors,  and  a  slot which apparently holds a

special decoder module when you buy the Executive service.

Hookup  is  straightforward.   Split  off  the  cable and run it to the

box.   My  cable company didn't mind me hooking it up myself, but other

cable  companies  may  differ;  best to check with them first.  Connect

the  RS-232  cable  to your serial port.  Since my machine has only one

serial  port,  I  bought  an  A/B  switch  so  I can still use my modem

without  swapping  cables.   One  thing  the  instructions  neglect  to

mention  is  that  you  must  set  your  serial  port to 9600-8N1 using

Preferences.   There is a toll-free customer service number if you have

problems.

The  Amiga  software  was  written  by  one Len Schiedel of Chiazz-Page

Systems.   This  is  not  just  clone-ported software;  it is very well

Amigatized.   All  the menu functions have keyboard alternates, and all

browsing  can  be controlled using just the cursor, shift, control, and

delete  keys,  or  by  using  the  mouse.   The file requesters are the

nicest  I  have  seen.   It's  also  very  stable-  in several weeks of

continuous  use,  I have not yet had a guru that I can attribute to it.

And it's still at version 1.0!

There  are  actually three programs on the X*PRESS Amiga disk: Xchange,

Viewer,  and  Xfer.   They  all run from either the Workbench or a CLI.

Xchange  is  the  program which runs in the background and captures the

packets.   It  co-exists  very  nicely in the multitasking environment,

and  doesn't  eat  much  CPU  time, even though the serial port data is

coming  in  at 9600 baud.  When you start Xchange, you tell it how much

memory  it  should  use to store articles.  I was a bit disappointed in

this  because  I thought it was going to write the articles directly to

disk.   You  can do that yourself manually, but it's not the same.  But

I  suspect  this  is  how the program is able to keep up with 9600 baud

and  not  use  too  much  CPU time.  Fortunately, the data is stored in

memory  in  compressed  format.  How much memory you should use depends

on  how  many  articles  you  expect to receive.  I give it 500 Kbytes,

which  will  hold  about  200  articles  (plenty).  When it runs out of

memory,  it  simply  stops  accepting  articles  until  you delete some

articles to free up memory.

The  Xchange  program  simply  does  the  data  collecting;   the  user

interface  is  done  by  the "Viewer" program.  You need run the Viewer

only  when  you  want  to  look  at  articles or change your customized

category  selections.   The  Viewer  writes  two files to your disk:  a

config  file  describing  your  customizations,  and  a  "deletes" file

listing articles you have discarded.  More about the Viewer below.

The  third  program is Xfer.  It is used to capture files which X*PRESS

transmits  during  specific  times during the wee hours of the morning.

It  must  run  it  in  place  of Xchange, meaning you have to shut down

Xchange  to  run  Xfer.  I think it should have been a part of Xchange,

but  I  guess  keeping  it  separate  reduces the size of Xchange.  The

transmit  times  of  the  files are listed in broadcast messages.  Each

file  has  a  name, and you tell Xfer the name of the incoming file and

the  directory  path  where  you want it written.  You leave it running

during  the  night,  and  when you wake up in the morning, there's your

file.   Unfortunately,  you can usually capture only one file per night

in  this  manner.  The files I have seen so far are all for the IBM PC:

the  UNZIP  program,  a  ledger program, an employee management system,

and  an  update to the IBM X*PRESS software.  The programs change every

week or so.

One  function  of  Viewer is to display a personalized stock portfolio.

The  portfolio  is  your customized list of up to 128 stocks, warrants,

rights,  indices, or mutual funds.  You simply enter the S&P symbols of

the  desired  items,  and  X*PRESS  fills in quotes for them, 3 times a

day:  opening,  midday,  and close (or every 15 minutes if you have the

Executive  service).   The  info  you  get  is high, low, last, change,

volume,  bid, ask, and ticks.  You don't get the time of the quote, and

a  disclaimer  states  that  the  quotes  are  delayed  by  at least 15

minutes.   I  understand a separate X*PRESS program is available called

"Metastock"  which  can  collect  stock  data  and  place  it  in files

suitable  for  stock  analysis  programs  and spreadsheets (but I would

guess it is all for the IBM PC environment).

The  other  function  of the Viewer is to view and manage categories of

articles.    All   articles  are  classified  in  a  hierarchical  tree

structure,  which  never  changes.   At  each point in the tree you can

select  or  disable  capturing  of  articles  in  that category and all

sub-categories.    Here   is  the  complete  list  of  the  categories.

Comments by me in [].

NEWS  [national and international only]

  Business & Finance

  USA     [includes transcripts of press conferences, hourly updates]

  Canada

  Mexico

  Soviet Union

  People's Republic of China

  Japan

  Taiwan

  Oil Exporting Countries

  West Germany

  France

  Other International

  Opinions & Editorials

WEATHER

  International

  National

  USA State   [from National Weather Service]

    (each state selectable)

  Canadian National

  Canadian Regional

    (each province/territory selectable)

SPORTS

  Headlines

  General Schedules

  TV Schedules

  Pro Football

    News

    NFL

    CFL

  Pro Baseball

    News

    Major Leagues

    Minor Leagues

  Pro Basketball

  Pro Hockey

  Pro Soccer

  Pro Golf & Tennis

  USA College Sports

  Canadial Sports

  Other Sports

  Sports Quiz

  Quiz Answers

LIFESTYLES   [lots of articles from USA Today]

  Food   [recipes, restaurants, etc.]

  Fitness & Fun

  Moneywise

  Family Today

  Careers

  Trends & Events

ENTERTAINMENT

  What's Happening

  Movies, Books, Music [includes movie reviews]

  In the Stars [astrology]

  TV Schedules [network, PBS, and cable]

  TV Scope

TECH TALK

  News

  IBM

  Apples

  Commodore [VERY low traffic here]

  Other

[Occasionally BIX articles and summaries are broadcast here]

SHOPPING  [I've never looked at this one]

  Best Buys

  Shopper's Showcase

  Travel & Leisure

  Fleamarket

INFORMATION X*CHANGE

  Using Information X*Change

  Students, Teachers & Parents

  Religion, Sex, & Politics

  Inside Your Head

  World Around Us

  Teen Talk

  Computers and You

  Pot Shots

[Mostly for elementary students & teachers.  It has a lame "conferencing"   ]

[system.  How do you conference on a one-way service?  You phone, fax, mail,]

[or modem -in your comments, which someone copies onto X*PRESS.  Right.     ]

INSIDE X*PRESS

  Bulletins  [this category cannot be disabled]

  News

  What to watch for

  User Tips

  New Services  [used to broadcast things to individuals, e.g. beta testers]

Where  does  all  this  information  come  from?  Some of it comes from

X*PRESS  Services  itself,  but  most  of  it  comes  from  other  news

services.   There  are  too many of them to mention here.  Some of them

include  AP,  Copley,  Knight-Ridder  Financial,  USA  Today,  Canadian

Press,   Agence   France   Presse,   Deutsche   Presse-Agentur,   Tass,

CNA-Taiwan,  Xinhau  (China),  and  many  others.   I have not seen any

articles  from  UPI, nor any from major newspapers.  AP is probably the

largest  contributor  to  the  News  category, and includes hourly news

updates.  There are mass quantities of business and finance articles.

As  you  can  imagine,  X*PRESS  supplies more information than you can

ever  use.   The  data  light  on  the  box  is on almost continuously,

meaning  that it is pumping over 70 megabytes of data per day into your

computer  (if  I  calculated  correctly).   Much  of  this is redundant

broadcasts,  but  there  is  still  a LOT of stuff.  One way to trim it

down  is  the  category selection mechanism already mentioned.  Another

way  is to use a keyword search feature.  You can set up two "folders",

which  are  really lists of keywords to watch for.  Even though you may

have  disabled  a  category, if one of your keywords are found in *any*

incoming  article,  that  article will be captured (only with the Amiga

and  Atari  versions).   Keywords  can  also  be  combined  with an AND

function,  so  that only articles which have all the ANDed keywords are

captured.   For  instance,  I  selected  "gold"  as a keyword, but kept

getting  sports articles mentioning gold medals until I selected "gold"

AND   "prices".   You  can  also  select  keywords  to  filter  through

already-captured articles.

To  use X*PRESS, you should leave your computer running during the day,

but  you  can  bring  up  X*PRESS  any  time and receive many articles.

Articles  are  transmitted several times during the day, so if you miss

one  you can usually get it later.  Each article is uniquely identified

by  its  category  and  a  time  stamp.   Once  you have the article in

memory,  repeats  of  the article will not be captured.  Each packet is

checksummed,  and  if  a  transmission error is detected, the packet is

discarded,  and  a later transmission of the packet is picked up.  When

you  are finished reading an article, you press the delete key, and the

article  is  removed  from memory, and a flag is set so that repeats of

the  deleted  article  are  not  captured.   It remembers the last 2048

articles  you  have  deleted- more than enough.  When you shut down the

program,  the  list of deleted articles is saved to disk, and read back

when you start it back up.

The  number  of  new  articles  broadcast  is greatest on weekdays.  It

slows  down  during  the  evenings and even more so on weekends (except

maybe  sports).   Stock  quotes are broadcast only once or twice on the

weekend.

Since  the  feel  of  an  Amiga  program  is  determined  by  its  user

interface,  I'll  describe the Viewer in more detail.   The main window

shows  the  current  article  you are reading.   You scroll through the

article  with  the  cursor  up/down  keys,  and go to the previous/next

article  using  the cursor left/right keys.   The delete key erases the

article.   Shift-cursor  accelerates  the  scrolling of the articles or

lines.   Scrolling  can  also  be  done with the mouse.  Control-cursor

moves  up, down, or through the category tree.  When you get to the end

of  a  category,  it  automatically  goes  to the next.  The top of the

window  shows what category level you are viewing and shows <FULL> when

no  more  articles  can fit in memory.   The bottom of the window shows

the  current  article  number,  how  many articles are available at the

category  level, and the news source or copyright for the article.  The

stock portfolio is shown in its own window, black on white.

The   rest   of  the  interface  is  accomplished  by  menu  items  and

requesters.  Here is a list the menu items [with comments].

PROJECT

  About X*PRESS  [usual stuff, plus running memory and packet statistics]

  Load

    Stories  [loads stories from a saved file, just as if they were captured]

    Config

  Save

    Append story     [saves story as a regular text file]

    Save story as    [ditto]

    Save config      [saves category selections]

    Save portfolio   [saves stocks and quotes as a regular text file]

    Save stock names [seems like this should be done by "save config"]

    Save level       [saves (appends) all articles in current level & below]

  Print

    Story

    Portfolio

  Quit Viewer    [shuts down Viewer, but Xchange still runs in background]

  Terminate ALL  [shuts down Viewer and Xchange, saves delete-list]

[When I need to shut down the machine but still have unread articles, ]

[I first do "save level" from the top level, then "terminate".  Then  ]

[later I can reload the stories with "load stories".                  ]

EDIT

  Cut          [deletes article]

  Copy

  Paste/Uncut  [cut, copy, and paste use the Amiga Clipboard!]

  Delete Level [erases all articles in current level and below]

VIEW

  All stories  [default mode]

  By category

  Folder 1

  Folder 2

  By keyword

  Show stories  [reopens a closed viewer window]

  Show RAW feed  [this is nifty- shows the raw packet data coming in!]

SETUP

  Categories   [brings up a file-like requester of categories & levels]

  Folder 1     [brings up a requester with keyword string gadgets]

  Folder 2       "

  Keywords       "

  New services

STOCK

  Open portfolio   [displays your stock portfolio and latest quotes]

  Sort stock names

===========================================================================

Any  problems?  you  may well ask.  Of course, there are a few, none of

which  are  that  bothersome,  and  they  don't  detract  much from the

usability  of  the  service.  Some are actually my opinions of what the

product *should* do.  Here are my main grumbles...

The  Viewer opens its window on the Workbench, so you get the Workbench

colors.   The  text comes out white-on-black, which hurts my eyes.  Why

didn't  they  use  the  standard  white-on-blue, or allow you to choose

without having to use Preferences.

When scrolling text, the letters briefly flicker red-- distracting.

Stories  are  not  supposed  to  be  captured twice, but sometimes they

broadcast  the  exact same text with a different time stamp, so you get

two copies of the story.

Missing  data.   Occasionally I don't receive all parts of a multi-part

story.  I've seen two days when the stock quotes never came in.

Occasional stories are obviously in the wrong category.

Occasional  stories  arrive  truncated or even missing the text.  Since

articles  are discarded when received with a checksum error, I can only

assume they were sent that way from X*PRESS.

When  loading previously-saved stories from disk, the serial port seems

to  hang,  and  I  have to shut down the program to get it going again.

To  prevent  this,  I switch off the data with the A/B switch until the

load finishes.

It  would be nice to see a list of captured articles by title line, but

apparently  articles  do  not  have  a  fixed  title line that could be

listed.   So  you have to look at each article to find what you want to

read or delete.

For  a  service  that  supplies  so  much  information, it needs better

control  over article selection.  Some categories, even at the end of a

tree  branch,  contain  too many articles.  The best way to handle this

is   to   use   folder   keywords   to  filter  the  articles  instead.

Unfortunately,  each  folder  lets  you  specify only 6 keywords, for a

total  of  12.   This  is  not enough! It's like carving wood when your

only tools are an axe and a razor blade.

It  also  needs  the  opposite  of keyword selection- a kill list.  For

instance,  I  *never*  want  to  see another article about 2 Live Crew.

And I would like to be able to exclude certain news sources.

An  ARexx  interface would be nice to have.   It could be used to solve

the article selection problem, and provide many other niceties.

=======================================================================

Well,  that about covers it.  For a hundred bucks one-time fee, I think

X*PRESS  is a great service, especially if you are an information junky

or  amateur  stock  market  tycoon.  It is essentially a new medium for

home  computers-- a live external information source that doesn't use a

phone  line  or  charge online fees.  I can see the potential for Amiga

owners  contributing  Amiga  articles  and  software for broadcast, and

maybe even developing new software to process X*PRESS information.

Although  X*PRESS  is  a one-way service, they encourage users to write

them  at  the  address  below  to  communicate questions, comments, and

suggestions  about  the software, service, or content, or to contribute

software.

Here's how to contact the X*PRESS folks:

      Sales/information number:  800-7PCNEWS  (800-772-6397)

      X*PRESS Information Services, Ltd.

      Regency Plaza One

      4643 S. Ulster Street, Suite 340

      Denver, CO  80237

-END-

Message-ID: #31546.pnet01.amiga/comp-amiga 1829 chars. (230 more)

From: maffett@netcom.UUCP (Tim Maffett)

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga

Subject: Re: Review of X*PRESS (comment)

Date: 31 Aug 90 21:30:53 GMT

Organization: Netcom- Public Access Unix

   Just a couple comments to add to the previous review:

X*Press runs flawlessly on my 2500/30, the software has never caused

a crash in over 1 year of continuous use.  In fact the software is one of

the nicest pieces of software I have, never found any bug of any kind, if

only all software could be this well done in the 1.0 release.

   I would also recommend calling X*Press's 1-800-PCNEWS number to find

out if you cable company carries X*Press (just tell them your zip code).

My reasoning for this is when I recently moved to a new area my cable 

company wanted to charge me $19.95 for the basic X*Press service (this

is supposed to be free, the 19.95 the rate for the Executive stock quote

service).  The cable company person told me that they only offer the

basic+Executive service, so thats why its 19.95.  I told him that I would 

decide later, and he told me that that it wasn't very popular, only 6 

subscribers out of the over 75,0000 households with cable (Palo Alt

o/Menlo 

Park area).  Anyway, to make a long story short, when I moved in it did

come with my basic cable and I don't have to pay for it.  If you just go 

through X*Press they will tell you if your cable company has it, and no

cable company salesperson will try to get you to pay for it ;)

   Best $99.00 I have every spent for my amiga.

-tim