david@looking.UUCP (David Rowley) (06/10/85)
I finally saw a 520ST in a local store the other day. It was running some pretty impressive demos, such as hi-res b&w pictures of the ST, Jack Tramiel and family, pictures of cowboys and a multiple bouncing ball. The quality of the b&w monitor is excellent, the picture is really crisp. Looking at the disk, it seems as though the capacity of the floppy is about 360K formatted, with TOS/GEM taking up about 206K currently (looks like they have a bit of paring down to get it into the 192K ROM). GEM looks much, much better on the ST than it does on the IBM PC. The keyboard feels good and the keys are well placed. One thing I find annoying about the ST is that menus pop down when you move the cursor onto the menu bar, instead of only when you click the mouse on the menu bar, as in the mac. I found I often popped down menus by mistake and then had to click on the desktop to get rid of them. I guess I can live with it, though. One of the desk accessories is a VT52 emulator (it looked fairly primitive... no windows, no menus). Other desk accessories were a control panel, clock calculator, but no breakout game. They also had DR Logo for it. It looked reasonably complete, multiple windows, support for mouse, graphics, etc. good use of the menus. It also appears that GEM allows the use of control key equivalents for menu selections, as on the mac (I hate having to use the mouse exclusively, especially for text- editing). The store said that they have already taken 100 orders for the machine, with availability in about 2-3 weeks. The cost: $1400 Cdn (includes floppy, bw monitor, logo and basic). Another store that had one was quite frustrated by the fact that the demo units came with no documentation. They had no idea how to use GEM and thus could not demo the ST at all. After showing them a few things, like double clicking and how to select items from the menus, they caught on. I guess this shows that mac-like interfaces are good because they are consistent, rather than because they are completely intuitive. It looks like the ST might do quite well. Maybe Apple will finally have to reduce its inflated prices. I would still like to hear more about Commodore's Amiga before I buy an ST. I thought they might introduce it (finally) at CES, but I guess I'll have to wait awhile. Looks like they don't mind giving Atari a head start. David Rowley. Looking Glass Software Waterloo, Ontario
vr0z05@unido.UUCP (06/13/85)
[This line for the old byte eater! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] The reason for the implementation of the pop down menus (not "pull down") in GEM is, as I have heard, that Apple has a patent on the specific implementation of this type of menu. Uwe Hoch Computer Science Department University of Dortmund 4600 Dortmund 50 P.O. Box 500500 West Germany E-mail address UUCP: ...!mcvax!unido!vr0z05
vr0z05@unido.UUCP (06/13/85)
>It looks like the ST might do quite well. Maybe Apple will finally have to >reduce its inflated prices. I hope too, that Apple "pulls down" the prices. I was an Apple fan for years, but since they dropped the support for the II's, I have no good wishes for Apple in the future. I think the rumors that Apple is about to sold, shows that they have not the Rolls Royce image, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Scully think they have. To be a good computer firm needs much more than building only one good computer. Apple has to learn many lessons until they are such a fantastic company like for instance HP. This company takes also very high prices, but their service is ten times better than the one of Apple. [The opinion expressed here is my own one. Apple and any word combination of the word Apple, I think, is a trademark of Apple Inc.] Uwe Hoch E-mail address UUCP: ...!mcvax!unido!vr0z05