MCMANIS%usc-eclc@sri-unix.UUCP (09/30/83)
From: Chuck McManis <MCMANIS@usc-eclc> Sorry, that should be Coleco. In todays (9/30/83) Wall St. Journal, is an article on some of the problems that Coleco has been having in getting ADAM out the door. The digital cassettes and the software are cited as the biggest hangups. From the report the software seemed as yet to error sensitive, that is it worked if you typed all of the right commands exactly but an error on your part in entering commands etc could and did cause unexpected and disastrous results on the machine, ie loss of text or lack of printing. The article also states that to meet their deadlines Coleco has been removing undebugged functions from the software rather than fixing them. This would be remedied by a add on cartridge next year that will return these features to the system, no mention of which features got yanked. I think I will wait and see if they get any out by christmas. --Chuck -------
leimkuhl@uiuccsb.UUCP (10/06/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1218100:uiuccsb:4400014:000:743 uiuccsb!leimkuhl Oct 5 15:23:00 1983 I saw that article too, but I didn't give the reporter much credit. On Friday, Coleco issued a rebuttal saying that the reporter had blatantly misquoted one of the Coleco execs there on several points (that was in the monday 10/3 WSJ). I got the impression that the reporter was sort of looking for problems with the machine and missed many of the good points (the most important being that the machine actually performed for the first time). The fact that the word processing program wasn't perfect the first time it was demonstrated shouldn't surprise any of us who have ever used commercial software. The real acid test of the new machine is the BYTE review, not some un- knowledgeable reporter's first impressions. -Ben Leimkuhler
akhtar@uiuccsb.UUCP (10/06/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1218100:uiuccsb:4400015:000:149 uiuccsb!akhtar Oct 5 16:17:00 1983 The real acid test of the machine is will people buy it! Granted it may be good, but that unfortunately has never been a sure guarantee of success.