rwm@atronx.OCUnix.On.Ca (Russell McOrmond) (01/09/91)
No Keyboard Garage, eh!.
Well, here are my Serious Gripes with the Amiga:
Marketing (Where all the problems are except one):
We have quite different companies running here between the various countries. I
think it would be great to have a little bit of communication (If this is happening,
it is not apparent) between these various companies. I was given an example
from the RCMP here in Ottawa (For those that do not know, the RCMP are the Canadian
Federal Police). In Australia (If memory serves me corrrect) Commodore has been
working very closely with the Police there, and they have quite a bit of their
INTERPOL Picture records and the like all set up on AMIGA systems. The software
was supplied via Commodore (I don't think written by, but it was taken care of
by), and the packages are said to be quite good.
Here in Canada, the RCMP have been given a very minimum of attention by
Commodore Canada, and have for the most part been sent to local dealers (Such
as the Dealership that I work for).
ANNOUNCEMENTS: When announcements are made (IE: 2.02 available to customers)
could Commodore indicate that this is the US company only. It causes reputation
problems for the dealers in other countries to have a 'DEFINITE' announcement
that does not apply (IE: Commodore Canada, while they have shipped 2.04 Test versions
to the Developers, have not that I have seen sent out updates to the DEALERSHIPS for
upgrades to the Workbench - While we have gotten KickStart upgrades, Canadian
dealerships are currently working with the 2.00 workbench)
RELIANCE on the dealerships at all is not a good idea. I was traveling in the
U.S. this summer, and dropped into a few dealerships to see how things are cooking.
With the Knowledge (Lack Thereof) of all the dealerships I went to (Quite a few
along the path from New York to West Chester/PA) I am quite surprised at the
popularity of the Amiga in the U.S. - There is no way I would have bought anything
from the Clowns that I ended up being introduced to. The BEST dealership I went
to was a MAC dealer (And I went there to find out about ZIP RAM for my A3000 -
This MAC dealership was the only place I could get any information out of)
A590: WHY can the controller not be sold separately - I could count the
DAILY sales of A590's that are lost due to the fact that is has this useless IDE 20M
drive in it. IF the A590 were sold WITHOUT the drive, allowing dealerships to add
in the HD, and sell as a package, sales would SKYROCKET. We have an AWSOME
controller, but with the drive supplied, other controllers end up coming out
looking better.
SOFTWARE:
SERIAL.DEVICE : Contray to popular belief, Closing the serial port in order to
drop the DTR line is NOT a valid solution. Has Commodore themselves never heard
of SHARED mode? Do they not realize that they are selling a Multi-tasking
computer, or did they hire out to Microsoft in order to write Serial.Device?
ASDG has included proper DTR control in their software, which is one of the main
reasons that I purchased their product. If I wanted more than 2 serial ports, I
would probably buy a second ASDG board over buying the Commodore 2232 board
specifically because of this Software *BUG*.
Now, I called SUPRA to find out if they could help me with DTR support on their
Internal cards - I cound not even find someone who could figure out what I was
talking about.
Please move any followups to the appropriate groups.
---
Opinions expressed in this message are my Own. My Employer does not even
know what these networks ARE.
Russell McOrmond rwm@Atronx.OCUnix.On.Ca {tigris,alzabo,...}!atronx!rwm
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