I remember that Rush Limbaugh used to have Compuserve as an advertiser in his early days and would compare the other online services feature for feature.
In any event, what's the story on why Jim Robinson got banned from Prodigy? As I recall, that was a venture involving Sears and it never had the freedom offered by Compuserve. Yes, a prettier interface on the former but we hard-core geeks preferred the spartan command-line of CI$ we we referred to it.
Don't forget the fabulous automated downloader and off-line reader "TapCIS". TapCIS had a feature I often wish Free Republic had, called a "twit filter" you could set to skip messages from specified posters!
And, I must confess, I made the ultimate descent into CompuServe geekdom by switching to IBM's OS/2 and the Golden CommPass CIS reader.
I was never banned from Prodigy. Just thought the internet would give us a broader audience, so started Free Republic. I continued posting on both for another six months or so until I decided to drop my Prodigy membership. The “banned from Prodigy” rumor was started later at one of the first anti-freeper sites. They just knew that if they told the world the “truth” about FR, it would be gone by Feb 8, 1999 (even named the date). And that was many, many years ago.