1.  Although only an estimated 6 percent of Americans have accounts with an on-line service or the Internet, the growth rate is accelerating.

2.  As a passionate investor, he always checks Compuserve, the commercial on-line service, for share price updates.

3.  AOL also posted an on-line news release announcing that it had passed Prodigy as "the nation's most active on-line service."

4.  Deifik said that while he had considerable experience with on-line services, he had never really looked at the Internet.

5.  Derivatives disasters no doubt will continue, say the pros, as will misleading enticements to investors who log on to the financial screens of on-line services.

6.  Currently, only about 5 percent of computer owners are hooked up to on-line services, said Mike Darcy, a Prodigy spokesman.

7.  Customers bypassed on-line services, signing up instead for Internet-access service such as AT&T Corp.'s.

8.  Deutsche Telekom AG, Bertelsmann AG and America Online Inc. formed a partnership to compete with Microsoft Corp. and other on-line services.

9.  Deutsche Telekom rings up sales whenever anybody dials up an on-line service, whether it's T-Online or not.

10.  Despite this "free" competition, the proprietary on-line services thrived in the early 1990s because they were easier to use and easier to access.