Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site alice.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!alice!aer
From: aer@alice.UucP (y)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Another Amiga reaction
Message-ID: <4353@alice.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 22:59:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: alice.4353
Posted: Fri Sep 20 22:59:48 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 04:54:53 EDT
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 40

I have gone into the wilderness of computer stores and seen the Amiga.
I'm no electrical engineer, so I can give a more "userly" reaction to
the Amiga, if you feel it's worth anything.

But first, the store had no one with Amiga experience, no manuals, and
the only software was the kickstart disk and the demo disk. No mouse either,
so I was stuck in the VERY MS-DOS like commandline interpreter.

Damn, how the commandline interpreter worked like an IBM or workalike.
Same dumb, hard to use command structure, albeit with several corrections,
like DOS commands available from within the unreasonably slow ABasiC.
It was preliminary software, so I expect Basic to speed up *muchlike.*

640x200 text is nothing special at all. And the way it was done, it looked
like a plain old (in colorboard mode) IBM PC. They should be able to
do better than that. This is surely no replacement for the Macintosh. The
hardware seems better, but no one has yet outdone Apple's famed Quickdraw
software.

As for interlaced (400 pixel vertical resolution) graphics (on the Amiga
monitor) ...well... trash it. It looked as if we were looking at the otherwise
amazing digitized 640x400 mandrill through a filter of bubbly ginger ale.
The flicker was badawfulyuckterrible. I hope that was only the monitor in
bad shape. I hope. Anyone able to reply to that?

Could someone post a complete list of:
  1) What software (like user-oriented, not development systems) is available,       especially word processors and the like?

  2) Compatible hardware, especially printers?

(Post on the net-- it's general interest.)
Nothing but thanks in advance,
d. Rosenberg
----------------------------------------------------------------------
D. Rosenberg @ Murray Hill  ATT/BTL  /\  uucp: ...!ihnp4!alice!aer
"My opinions are my own."              (Please send mail TO DAN)
----------------------------------------------------------------------