steve@kontron.UUCP (Steve McIntosh) (06/01/85)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH a babel fish *** I recently posted the following RUMORS to the CompuServe ATARI special interest group. At the time, I was fairly convinced that there were at least some bits of truth in them (one of my sources claimed that he was signed to a non-disclosure statement). The rumors were (in descending chance of being correct): 1) The Commodore Amiga is rolling off of the Sanyo production lines. 2) The Hitachi advanced video chip is being used instead of the Amiga video chips. 3) The Amiga is using the same parts as the Sanyo MB-55 except for the motherboard and the logo. Two of the sysops pinned my ears back. Here are their responses: >Fm: SYSOP*Michael Reichmann 76703,2007 > > The information in your message regarding the Amiga is total >rubbish! Vertually nothing contained in your "rumors" is true. > Due to non disclosures I'm unable to say more than that. Find a >new source of information. Your current one is worthless. > >Fm: SYSOP*Steve Ahlstrom 76703,2006 > >Your info ranges from poor to terrible! We'll all be able to judge for >ourselves and comment on the relative merits of the 2 most sought after >machines in a long time (ST and Amiga) sometime late this summer. Well, I TRY to get the straight info... But those that know, dont talk (very) much - which is the same as it ever was.
chris@que.UUCP (Chris DeVoney) (08/09/85)
A Midwest distributor and Commodore had a private showing of the Amiga for computer stores and the press in our city last Monday (8/4). I had the opportunity to talk with the distributor and the VP Sales of Commodore and a person from the technical support group. Here are some impressions. The room had twelve Amigas along the wall. Most were running graphics programs. Simply, the graphics are staggering and the best I have seen on a <$10K box. The sound was also excellent. I am throughly impressed with the machine's graphics and sound. I saw prerelease versions of pfs family software and the Enable product. I very briefly dabbled with both and they work similiarly to their PC & Apple counterparts. I also used 1-2-3 on one of the machines. It works, slowly. I'm to used to my PC AT to accurately judge the speed but it appeared to be slower than or about the speed of a floppy-based PC. The machine used a 5 1/4 inch disk drive but the "hardware accelerator" for the PC emulation mode is not yet ready. The entire 8088-emulation was in software. On a sidenote, I tried to go to the end of the spreadsheet. The Amiga does not have a home, page up or down, or end key. This need the use of 1-2-3 less than ideal. However, the 10 special function keys worked that same on the Amiga as they do on the PC. I breifly scanned the "user's manual" and "hardware manual." The user's manual is well-illustrated (losts of pictures). For content I rate it no better or worse than most other computer companies. The hardware manual left a blank impression with me. I needed more than five minutes, the amount of time I allotted myself to read through it, to judge its completeness. Most important things appeared to be in the manual, but I cannot tell. The machine is multitasking. I ran three graphics applications in different windows. The applications slowed as each task was added, but none degraded to an unacceptable degree. You can access the machine through the window-oriented methods using the mouse, or through the cli (command language interface) which has commands similar to MS-DOS V2-3. The OS uses UNIX-like subdirectories and I/O redirection. I found little technical information on the OS in their documentation. However that may be a role that a technical reference manual will fill. The distributor reported that attending dealers were impressed with the machine. I questioned three dealers. I found that the three had signed that day to take on the Amiga line. Each felt the machine was a compliment to their current lines (which were IBM or IBM-clone and Apple). The VP of Sales stated that the machine will only be sold to speciality (computer) stores. He also stated the initial target audience is small business users and departmental users. He also stated he sees tremendious opportunity in the educational fields for the machine, both traditional (k - 12 and college) and industrial. I also asked what was Commodore like today. The VP was a former Apple executive and said he felt very comfortable with Commodore. The person from technical was he was at Commodore during Trimel's reign and left. He's back now. The difference was "like day and night." He obviously likes things now at Commodore. The bottom line question to ask is: Would the reviewer buy one of these? I will cop out by saying I never have and never will buy a computer for personal use. I let the company do that for me. I will state I see the signs of the next Apple II in this machine. -- Chris DeVoney voice: 317/842-7162 Que Corporation uucp: ihnp4!inuxc!que!chris Indianapolis, IN #include <trademarks.all && disclaimer.all> /* you know what these are for */