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From: ali@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: An Abel's question and an Abel's trivia quiz
Message-ID: <432@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Mon, 20-Jul-87 15:16:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky.432
Posted: Mon Jul 20 15:16:23 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Jul-87 06:21:01 EDT
Reply-To: ali@rocky.stanford.edu (Ali Ozer)
Distribution: world
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 105

[---------------]

First, a question... Is Abel's still alive and running? A friend of
mine called them up several hundred times in the last three days and got the
busy signal every time. (Except once, at 2 am, but then no one answered...)
Poor guy, he was ready to dish out $400 for a 2 Meg board, but he can't get
anyone to take his money.

Next, a little trivia quiz for you people. All questions and answers
taken from Abel's July 2nd price list. (The price list was online,
and nicely formatted, so it took no time to create a database and come up
with some silly queries... Other than this convenience, and buying from them
twice, I have no relation to Abel's. I also have no idea how accurate the
information in their list is...)

There are ^L's between the questions and answers, hopefully that won't
screw anything up for anyone... Also, you must note that Abel's
doesn't carry everything...  I'm just using their price list because it
was convenient. They have a total of 568 products listed, 367 software
(all Amiga specific), 79 hardware (almost all Amiga specific), 61 books
(mostly Amiga specific), and 61 accessory items (some Amiga specific)...

Ok, here it goes:

What is the most expensive software product Abel's sells?

Station Manager (Associated Computer Serv.) $995.00/$536.55
                                           (Prices are List Price/Abel's Price)

Most expensive hardware product?

If you said the A2000, you're wrong... And if you said
something about the Turbo Amiga, well, they don't carry it...
So, you can guess again ---

PAL W/43Meg Drive (Byte By Byte) $3995.00/$2951.99
(Is that thing really list priced that high? I though it was more like $3000)

The next two most expensive hardware items?

Amega 150-Meg Hard Drive W/Controller (C Ltd.) $3100.00/$2639.00
PAL W/20Meg Drive (Byte By Byte) $3195.00/$2360.85

The least expensive software?

Workbench 1.2 (Enhancer) (Commodore-Amiga, Inc.) $14.95/$10.30

(Yeah for Commodore!)

Most heavily discounted program?

Textcraft (Commodore Business Mach.) $99.95/$28.32 --- 71.7% discount

Next most heavily discounted program? (Hint: We're talking NOT OUT yet)

Wordperfect (Wordperfect Corporation) $395.00/$179.39 --- 54.6% discount

Most heavily discounted hardware item?

A1020 5 1/4" Drive W/Transformer (Commodore Amiga) $395.00/$168.18 --- 57.4%

(Actually Omega 80 300/1200 Modem (Anchor Automation) $199.95/$85.00 is 
discounted a bit more heavily (57.5%) but it's not really an Amiga specific
product...)

The least expensive item Abel's sells?

Sony 3.5" Disks SS/DD (Bulk) (Sony) $1.95/$1.15

Percentage of software items priced under $50 (list)?
Percentage of software items priced $50 or above, and under $100 (list)?

58.7%
27.1%

Number of programs put out or distributed by Electronic Arts?

46 programs out of 367

Number of different companies listed?

188.
This number may be somewhat off. I tried checking out the different "company"
values, except there were a lot differently spelled of listings for the same
company --- Commodore, Commodore-Amiga, Comdodore, etc... So I went through
by hand and tried to collapse the names, but I might've missed a bundle. Also,
of course, not all of these companies make Amiga stuff --- Accessory (disks,
modems) makers are included here also.

A more interesting question is, what is the number of different companies 
putting out Amiga software?

118. 
Same warnings as above apply...

Average software list price? Average hardware list price?

$77.99 average software price   
$688.30 average hardware price  

Well, that's it. If you got all questions right, then bravo! Call up Abel's,
or go to your nearest dealer, and treat yourself to a 2 Meg board. Your Amiga
will love you! (But you'll have to pay for it, this is a cheap trivia quiz.)

Ali Ozer, ali@rocky.stanford.edu