Channel 3 is better: The maligned but improving Slate resides here, as does a nifty time capsule ''exhibit'' called Retrospect 360[degrees] and the beautifully designed and written travel 'zine Mungo Park. The lifestyle-oriented Channel 4 features a solid wine guide; a women's magazine with regular writing by Molly Ivins, Miss Manners, and Merrill Markoe; and the upscale but car-fetishizing V-Style, aimed at people who worship Infiniti commercials. The snotty, superficial, and fun 'zine Mint is the high point of Channel 5, targeted at Gen-Xers, and Channel 6 caters to ''interactive teens,'' with pen pals, a high-school soap, and an astrology column written in pandering dude-speak.

All in all, OnStage is batting about .500 — and that's just one area of MSN. More utilitarian subsites include a car-buying service and such Web-ified CD-ROM projects as Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia and Cinemania movie guide (minus the disc's reviews by Leonard Maltin, Pauline Kael, and Roger Ebert, all of whom were no doubt wary of parting with online rights).

Downsides? Surfing MSN can be as agonizingly pokey as any Web experience. AOL has a far greater variety of content. Most critically, MSN's communications tools just don't compute. I was never able to access any of the service's bulletin boards, and Chatworld puts users' conversations on screen in the form of comic-strip panels. Sure, you can toggle into straight text if you want, but for sheer eccentricity of concept, this is up there with last year's failed desktop system, Microsoft Bob.

To which I say: So what? Love it or loathe it, Microsoft has always specialized in jamming a product out fast, then improving it over time. And what's already good about MSN — fluidity, flash, a willingness to try anything, no matter how dopey — will keep it afloat until the service gets its act together. The other online outfits have long offered entertainment. MSN is the first to be entertaining. B+

Originally posted Nov 29, 1996 Published in issue #355 Nov 29, 1996 Order article reprints
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