henry@rochester.UUCP (09/13/85)
From: Henry.Kautz
I just played with some ST's at the King of Prussia shopping mall
(the country's largest!). I was extremely impressed with the ST. The
monochrome display was EXTREMELY sharp: it was just as sharp as the
MacIntosh, but with a larger display. I saw a demo of a super
spreadsheet program, which not only had multiple windows, but the
ability to adjust the font size in each: you could make the characters
and lines large enough to read across the room. Programs load and
execute VERY fast. Maybe the Amiga will do color better, but for black
and white, I suspect that all those chips are just wasted horsepower.
The dealers were particularly unhelpful, even for computer salespeople
(I suspect that there is an IQ test for becoming a computer
salesperson: if you score in 2 digits, you sell Apple and IBM; if you
score in 1 digit, you sell Atari; 3 digits and they throw you out). At
one place they had removed the mouse, and REFUSED to plug it in!
(Finally I discovered how to manipulate the curser and "click" from the
keyboard.) None the less, the machines were selling themselves.
One of the major factors that sold and continues to sell the Mac is its
sharp display. All the spinning cubes in the world won't help a user
if he can't read the text on the screen (and anyway, the ST can spin
cubes and bounce balls, even if it does so slower than the
Amiga.) Commadore really screwed up by not giving the Amiga a hi-res
non-interlaced display. A 200 line display is GARBAGE. Period.
I am amazed at how the ST is being ignored by the computer press.
Nothing touches it for price/performance. The Atari ads people are
complaining about are a lot more factual then 99% of the ads you see
(yeah, tell me why NRC "builds a better computer", why ATT "has the
future built in", or why "an Apple can balance your budget"; if you
want to flame, then flame about the AT ads which stress its enormous
address space, but don't mention that DOS can't use it...)
---- Henry Kautz
:uucp: {seismo|allegra}!rochester!henry
:arpa: henry@rochester
:mail: Dept. of Comp. Sci., U. of Rochester, NY 14627
:phone: (716) 275-5766