ewilts%Janus.MRC.AdhocNet.CA%UNCAEDU.BITNET@CORNELLC.CIT.CORNELL.EDU (Ed Wilts - CandianOxy) (12/30/88)
>in article <872@io.UUCP>, joyce@io.UUCP (Joyce Nachimson) says: >> What do you people think about the AMIGA 500 as a "family's first computer"? >> (family is computer naive to illiterate). The main uses would be word >> processing, games, and some music applications. This is the same situation that one my friends is in. He purchased a 1000 about 3 years ago as his first computer. He is total computer illiterate and still doesn't care about the CLI at all - it must be point&click or he won't use it. He is still happy with his decision. He added database to your list as well. > The Amiga will also do >music quite well; if you are an expert in electronic music, you can do >professional quality stuff, if a novice at music, there's still >powerful yet simple programs out there. You can play with basic music packages such as Sonix which provides excellent sounding output but with limited editing or MIDI support. You can use Deluxe Music Construction Set for excellent editing and good MIDI support. My primary reason for buying my Amiga was for its audio capabilities. I have since added two keyboards to my system and am still happy. >However, it is not as easy to do word processing with the Amiga; it >has some good word processors, but most of them are somewhat >non-intuitive. The only simple word processor I know well is >Scribble!, which costs some $90 or so from MicroSystems (although they >may have retired the old gal when Excellence came out). If you want to >get a bit upscale, Excellence, its big brother, is much easier to use >than Word Perfect. It's only slightly cheaper, though, weighing in at >some $170 or so mail-order (as vs. around $190 for WordPerfect). My recommendation for word processing is KindWords. It is a low-end word processing that does most of the basic kind of stuff with some limited graphics capabilities. I picked it up for US$58.54 mail order at Abel. It is very easy to use (even for beginners) and has a special (optional) output mode for those who want letter quality print on inexpensive printers (like my 9-pin Epson RX-80). This will produce a graphic dump of the page (which is very slow) but is quite useful for the few times I really need LQ mode. I am quite happy with the product and am patiently awaiting the newly released version 2.0. As for games, well you just can't beat the Amiga. We all have to entertain ourselves once in a while :-) Hope this helps. .../Ed (ewilts%janus.mrc.adhocnet.ca@uncaedu.bitnet) Ed Wilts Sr. Systems Analyst, Canadian Occidental Petroleum Ltd. Calgary, Alberta, Canada (403) 234-1007