macdonald@author.dec.com (Paul MacDonald -- DTN 223-3439) (11/21/86)
A Commodore Computer Fair was held at the Best Western Conference
Center in Marlboro, MA last weekend. I would put the raw attendence
estimate at 2,000 heads.
Genlock was there and caught a lot of attention, so much so that all the
local Amiga shops are sold out of their first alotments. They have been
mentioning Friday November 21 as the big day for receiving the units.
One shop that had a booth set up sold 50 copies of V1.2 at $12.95. I bought
one and here's what I got:
A nice record shrink-wrapped Commodore record jacket
containing 3 diskettes - Kickstart, Workbench, and
Extras. The latter has a new version of MBASIC and some
new utilities (including some unsupported Tool Kit stuff
like Emacs!). A hefty set of release notes was also
included (loose --> no binding no holes punched!).
Flight Simulator II by SubLogic was sold out by noon everywhere. I grabbed
a copy for $42 and have had some fun with it over packet radio doing some
formation flying with another ham!
The Canon PJ-1080A seems to be a real sleeper for color print buffs. They
were selling like hotcakes (grabbed one of them too). Netters, its a
great machine, well made and good color output for the price ($250). Sub-par
for straight text use though (no descenders and an upside-down Q for the
letter O).
A lot of user's groups were making a buck or two on Public Domain. A pretty
fancy disk duplicating setup was kept busy all day.
Although the Amiga Hardware was spread about, the 128 and 64's had the bulk
of the exhibition space.
Hope to see it again next year.
Paul