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From: dan@BBN-LABS-B.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Big, Slimy Atari Ads
Message-ID: <3644@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 13-Sep-85 07:00:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3644
Posted: Fri Sep 13 07:00:16 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Sep-85 05:44:36 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Dan Franklin 

The Atari ad was really very clever in its subtle distortions and omissions.
For anyone who couldn't remember offhand, when seeing that ad, just why
the Amiga might be worth $1000 more than the Atari 520ST, here are some entries
they SHOULD have had in that table but didn't...

		        ATARI 520ST     Amiga
Screen Resolution
Interlaced, color	640x200		640x400

Windowing Hardware      No (I assume)   Yes

Maximum RAM		???		8 MB (theoretically, anyway)

Multitasking OS		No (I assume)	Yes

Sprite Hardware		No (I assume)   Yes

Hardware collision      No              Yes
detection

IBM PC Emulation        No              Yes

And of course Atari quotes the Amiga price with color monitor and compares it
to the Atari 520ST price with monochrome monitor.

The ad's screen resolution entry, which compares non-interlaced resolutions
only, I find particularly annoying.  Clearly Apple should come out with a
similar "comparison" with an entry "Screen resolution (pixels/inch)" which
proves that the Mac's screen is much higher resolution than anybody else's...

Re Dvorak's InfoWorld column: Dvorak too (as usual) is being a bit misleading.
Does the Byte article really indicate that technical people are being ignored?
The Boston presentation of the Amiga contained dealers, PR people, and software
developers in about equal numbers, and the head of Commodore Amiga software
development (or something like that--at any rate, a knowledgeable person)
was there answering questions ranging from the availability of genlock (yes)
to whether the IBM PC emulation assist board would have an 8086 in it (no).
Does that indicate that technical writers, and others, are being ignored?
I can't help suspecting that Dvorak is just hurt because he wasn't invited...

If, in fact, "leading technical writers" are "withholding judgement" on the
Amiga, it's probably because they haven't had a chance to use the machine very
much (technical presentations and articles are not enough).  And THAT is
probably because the software we've seen so far hasn't been very robust
("crashes every 15 seconds", as someone else put it).  Developers are tolerant
of such things; they know they can be fixed.  Reviewers generally aren't.

	Dan Franklin