Article-I.D.: decwrl.6540
Posted: Fri Nov 21 14:33:10 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Nov-86 21:59:38 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 37

A Commodore Computer Fair was held at the Best Western Conference
Center in Marlboro, MA last weekend. I would put the raw attendence
estimate at 2,000 heads.

Genlock was there and caught a lot of attention, so much so that all the
local Amiga shops are sold out of their first alotments. They have been
mentioning Friday November 21 as the big day for receiving the units.

One shop that had a booth set up sold 50 copies of V1.2 at $12.95. I bought
one and here's what I got:

      A nice record shrink-wrapped Commodore record jacket
      containing 3 diskettes - Kickstart, Workbench, and
      Extras. The latter has a new version of MBASIC and some
      new utilities (including some unsupported Tool Kit stuff
      like Emacs!). A hefty set of release notes was also
      included (loose --> no binding no holes punched!).

Flight Simulator II by SubLogic was sold out by noon everywhere. I grabbed
a copy for $42 and have had some fun with it over packet radio doing some
formation flying with another ham!

The Canon PJ-1080A seems to be a real sleeper for color print buffs. They
were selling like hotcakes (grabbed one of them too). Netters, its a
great machine, well made and good color output for the price ($250). Sub-par
for straight text use though (no descenders and an upside-down Q for the 
letter O).

A lot of user's groups were making a buck or two on Public Domain. A pretty
fancy disk duplicating setup was kept busy all day.

Although the Amiga Hardware was spread about, the 128 and 64's had the bulk 
of the exhibition space. 

Hope to see it again next year.

Paul