conklin@eecae.UUCP (Terry Conklin) (05/12/88)
Well after 2 days at Comdex, we got our work done early and came home so I thought you might be interested at what was news. Atari was there, on the floor with a relatively large booth. This is a very serious attempt at marketing because even a small 10 x 10 booth will cost a company upwards of $40,000 to put up, and Atari's booth was about 40 x 40. The Atari booth had Mega ST's everywhere. Almost every display was a Mega, except for an occasional 1040. After searching the entire booth, I finally asked and found that Atari did not have a _single_ 8 bit on display. On the other hand, Atari did have a '286 AT compatible on display, and a couple of the Atai Laserprinters. I didn't notice them in operation but I was very busy at the time. Neil Harris was there, and so I asked about his presence on the net. His presence or lack of is simply a matter of time. He logs on to things about 4 (?) times a week these days. He did mention that several people in engineering log on, so ifyou guys are out there, please speak up. As for products at the show? I wasn't really looking. I just kept thinking about the thousands of people back home with 8bits. But we've gotten to the point where millions count. One thing that Neil Harris did mention that I thought was interesting. 8 bits still account for a meaningful amount of sales, largely because they are being sold to (suprise!) Poland now. I think something like 100,000 units sold in Poland or such. Interesting. Such was excitement. Sorry I don't have more, but Comdex is a big show and the few minutes I spent at the Atari booth was probably the most I spent at any single vendor. Terry Conklin ihnp4!msudoc!conklin (517) 372-3131 3/12/2400 (313) 334-8877 3/1200
kimes@ihlpe.ATT.COM (Kit Kimes) (05/13/88)
In article <8254@eecae.UUCP>, conklin@eecae.UUCP (Terry Conklin) writes: > Well after 2 days at Comdex, we got our work done early and came home so > I thought you might be interested at what was news. > > The Atari booth had Mega ST's everywhere. Almost every display was a > Mega, except for an occasional 1040. After searching the entire booth, I > finally asked and found that Atari did not have a _single_ 8 bit on > display. > As far as I know, Atari has never displayed or tried to push the 8bit machines at COMDEX. This simply is not the right show for it. On the other hand, they should have a pretty good push of the 8bit machines, especially is the guise of the XE Game Machine, next month at the Summer Consumer Electronic Show here in Chicago. I will be looking at Atari and all the third party software houses to see what, if any, bright spots I can find. ANTIC usually has reports on Compuserve that someone posts here. I will have my own report, although much abbreviated from what you can find there. Kit Kimes AT&T--Information Systems Labs ...ihnp4!ihlpe!kimes