CompuServe Information Manager

The program provided a GUI front end to the text-based CompuServe service that was at the time accessed using a standard terminal program with alphanumerical shortcuts.

Issued at the same time as the GUI-only America Online began to grow in popularity, CIM was available for MS-DOS ("DOSCIM"), Microsoft Windows ("WinCIM"), Macintosh ("MacCIM"), and OS/2 ("CIM for OS/2") and allowed access to CompuServe's features, such as its forums, chat, e-mail, and messaging facilities; these continued to be accessible via standard communications software using alphanumeric shortcuts.

[1] Later, CompuServe switched parts of its service over to its new binary protocol, Host Micro Interface.

Version 3.0 (CompuServe for Windows 3.0), in 1997, was intended to compete head-on with AOL, and was released amid an advertising campaign in which CompuServe was briefly re-branded as "CSi".

However, it remained possible to connect to WinCIM via HMI, which became known as the "CompuServe Classic" service.