Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!gymble!umcp-cs!seismo!columbia!topaz!dan 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. Lines: 50 From: Dan FranklinThe 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