Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!tennents.cs.ubc.ca!fraga
From: fraga@tennents.cs.ubc.ca (Eric Fraga)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: 1 million...
Message-ID: <65@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 29 Nov 88 22:00:39 GMT
References: <11767@cup.portal.com> <36500057@silver> <11868@cup.portal.com>
Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca
Reply-To: fraga@tennents.cs.ubc.ca (Eric Fraga)
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Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 69

In article <11868@cup.portal.com> Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) writes:
>What are you talking about?  I simply posted sales figures for the
>ST from sources I have read, obviously a case of another touchy
>Amiga owner...
>
>Pete

Your article was perfectly fine.  However, the article that
started this whole stream of discussion was NOT.  I am not sure
if the flame you are responding to was directed at the original
article or not but it should have been...  Briefly, the original
article (edited) was:

| From: cs64fba@sdcc14.ucsd.edu (TAI)
| Subject: 1 million...
| Message-ID: <358@sdcc14.ucsd.edu>
| 
| Well, the Amiga is approaching the million mark...(sadly).  Does
| anybody know how far is the Atari ST from that point?
  ...



I hate comments like this that have a habit of escalating into
yet another Amiga vs ST war (one of the most useless wastes of
net bandwidth ever seen).

Why is it ``sad'' that the Amiga is approaching the million mark?
I own an ST (and have for over three years now) and am very happy
with it (given the price I paid for it and the amount of use I
have made of it).  However, owning an Atari does not mean that
one must wish bad sales on other machines.

Sure, good sales for other machines will cause software
developers to create products for those machines.  This can
reduce the amount of software produced for the Atari.  However,
given the problems with the ST (Atari itself, lack of new
products, buggy OS, etc),  I think that good sales of other
machines are a minor part of any movement away from ST software
development.  Even if Amiga sales were much lower than they are,
the problems with the ST would not disappear.

Actually, I don't buy games so I really haven't seen that much of
a reduction (if any) in the amount of software being produced for
the ST.  It might be true in games but I don't really care :-)

Finally, if the fact that (maybe -- I haven't seen any real
figures one way or the other) Amigas are selling more than STs is
really important to you (generic ``you''), then sell your ST and
buy an Amiga.  Seems like a silly reason to buy a machine, but to
each his own...

For the record, _I_ like the STs, the Amigas, and MS-DOS
machines, depending on what I am looking for.  I even still like
(and use!) my Model 100 although I wish somebody would come up
with a replacement for it that was in the same spirit (i.e. no
disk drives; essentially a portable computer that emulates a
notepad) but with a much bigger screen and a wee bit more memory
(one of the latest NECs comes close).  Ooops, getting off topic
completely here!  Choosing a machine is a _personal_ thing.  And
depends on what tasks you have in mind for it.

'nuff said.


...back to work on my SUN (now, _that_ would be a nice machine to
have at home :).
Eric S Fraga, Dept of Computer Science, University of British Columbia
+1 604 228 4907, fraga@cs.ubc.cdn