On Tuesday 21 February 2006 10:26, Jason Frisvold wrote:
On 2/21/06, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
Oddly enough, AOL and several other large providers seem to have no problems advertising some variant on 'free A/V software'.
Key words there.. "Large Provider" .. I don't think A/V companies have any interest whatsoever in smaller providers.. Just not a big enough customer base I guess...
It would be nice to see an A/V provider willing to take that first step and offer something like this to providers, regardless of size. No packaging needed, so there's a cost savings there for the vendor.
I'm not familiar with how this works in AOL land.. Does the end-user need to subscribe to anything other than AOL? ie, are there any "hidden" fees?
The problem with discussing AOL and "large provider" in the same sentence is that the complete AOL (connection, desktop, tools, etc) function are AOL controlled (walled garden) so they have the capability of doing much more in that arena that other providers. Secondly, to the best of my knowledge, A/V vendors do make their products available to "any" provider - it is just that small to medium sized ISP's cannot justify the cost/benefit ratio and keep their pricing anywhere near competitive with the "big" boys. At ten copies a month you get little to no discount - at 10,000 copies per month you get quite a cut... -- Larry Smith SysAd ECSIS.NET sysad@ecsis.net