For gmail users complaining about FD messages getting clipped, a text version will not solve this problem. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. What does seem to work, however, is viewing your messages through an email reader, such as Outlook, as opposed to the normal, Web-based method.
And for users of older versions of AOL, this message from one of my very patient readers will come as a relief:
VOILA!
For those whose old AOL versions won't read HTML, a *free* solution to reading FD.
AOL has, as of this morning, stopped providing newsgroup access. It was suggested to me that I subscribe to news.individual.net (a free service) which would require Netscape (another free service) to read the newsgroups.
In the process of setting up Netscape to download the newsgroups, it also downloaded some of my e-mail, and I realized that it was showing the HTML version of the first one. Sure enough, when I marked this morning's FD as Unread and downloaded it, Voila, perfectly legible in HTML format.
Thus, Dave dear, you may now cash my check for a year's subscription, because I *can* now read it without trying to slog through all that coding. And you can report this as a potential solution to your other readers on obsolete computers.
Again, I never suspected this transition would be painless, but each day we seem to solve another problem and I’m optimistic all the kinks will be ironed out by April 1, when you all either have to start paying for real or visit 200+ Web sites on your own each day.
Speaking of the subscription drive, the number one reason I get from people as to why they won’t be continuing after I go to the paid model is “It’s not cost effective because I haven’t gotten any work.” I’m hoping today’s article, on writing email queries, will alleviate some of those problems.
