[comp.sys.amiga] GTC '89, no CBM

hrlaser@sactoh0 (Harv R. Laser) (05/19/89)

I just got back from a couple hours of schmoozing around on the
exhibits floor of something called "Government Technology
Conference", sort of a mini-Comdex being held in Sacramento, CA
(the state Capital) through May 19th. 

This expo features hi-tech exhibitors showing "solutions for
cooperative industry-government activities etc. etc. blah blah" -
basically yer computer and perhipheral vendors with their 
latest wares.  

A partial list of exhibitors (there were around 200 "booths")
included Amdahl, Apple, Apollo, Atari (!?), AT&T, Compaq, DEC,
Kodak, Epson, Grid, H-P, IBM, Irwin, Microsoft, Motorola, NCR, NEC,
Novell, Panasonic, Sun, Tandem, Unisys, Wang, Xerox, Zenith,
WordPerfect, and lots of others.  WordPerfect put on a good show,
throwing hats and keychains into the audience, and demoed some
stuff with their MS DOS version 5.0 that had me drooling. 

Unfortunately, Commodore was nowhere in sight. I didn't see a
single
Amiga anywhere on the exhibits floor.  The only time I even heard
the name "Amiga" mentioned was when the WordPerfect demonstrator
said "And we also run on hardware such as....."

<sigh>

-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Harv Laser                  |  SAC-UNIX, Sacramento, Ca.  |  
| Plink: CBM*HARV             |  UUCP=...pacbell!sactoh0    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (05/23/89)

In article <987@sactoh0> hrlaser@sactoh0 (Harv R. Laser) writes:
>I just got back from a couple hours of schmoozing around on the
>exhibits floor of something called "Government Technology
>Conference", sort of a mini-Comdex being held in Sacramento, CA
>(the state Capital) through May 19th. 
>
>Unfortunately, Commodore was nowhere in sight. 

I just got back from "World of Commodore" in L.A. May 19th, 20th, and 21rst.
Commodore had a full sized booth and several vendors showing off their 
products. It would have been pretty difficult for CBM to be in Sacramento
at the beginning of the week and L.A. at the end of the week no? Anyway,
since you didn't see any Amigas there it probably means they haven't
penetrated that market much. 

The neatest thing at WOC was easily Music-X, the guy demoing it claimed 
it would ship in "3 weeks" now I suspect those are marketing weeks so
look for it in the late summer or early fall. I'd brought a friend along
who was part musician and part hacker. When it ships he will go out and
buy an Amiga. Pretty amazing. It also comes with three patch editors
"built in" and they claim they will have a patch editor construction
kit so that you can build patches and distribute them PD if you want.
Frankly, I was quite impressed. It was also going to cost $299 and 
would not be copy protected. We'll see I suppose. It is certainly worth
that, but a lot of the Amiga market is populated by clowns who think
1K X 1K color graphics for more than $800 is a "rip off." That is
really too bad since they may contribute to the eventual failure of
the machine.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"A most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"