From: ccb8m@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Charles C. Bundy)
Subject: Reply to Amiga Hate
Originator: ccb8m@onyx.cs.Virginia.EDU
Organization: University of Virginia Computer Science Department
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 15:50:33 GMT

Derek Billingsley (j2yc@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (EvilEd)) writes:

>About a year ago, I encouraged my girl friend (who was entering her 
>third year of a History degree) to purchase an Amiga to do simple tasks
>like word processing, and for me a bit of telecommuting.  I have
>never regretted a decision more than this.. let me tell you why...
>
>Friends of mine in the Amiga world were forever praising the Amiga.
>And I had an old XT clone which I felt perfectly adequate to do
>any type of tasks which I needed done.  But after I introduced my YL
>to the world of GUI word processing, she wanted something nice and 
>simple to use... point click drag and shoot instead of the traditional
>CTRL-SHIFT-F7, etc.  Well good enough.  It was either to go with the
>Mac or the Amiga...
>
>I convinced her to spend the extra money to get an amiga (About $3000 
>for the 2000HD with the 1084s, a modem, and a printer.. actually maybe
>a bit more...)  I wanted it to play around with after hearing such
>nice things about it from friends...
>

Well, if your choice was between a Mac and an Amiga for WYSIWYG WP you
should have gone with the Mac.  Of course your claim of $3000 takes into
account a lot of stuff BESIDES the Amiga.  Please don't insinuate that
an Amiga was more expensive than a Mac$$$ cpu-wise, it just isn't true
unless you like monochrome 8" screens :)

>What a load of crap.  Every day I think I hate this machine more and more.
>Staring at a word processor, you'd swear that you were looking at CGA
>text.  Sure they say the amiga has 4096 dazzling colours.. what they don't
>say is that the resolution of plain and simple text is garbage to look
>at for any length of time other than to type LEMMINGS on the CLI screen.
>Simple word processing is not worth the $200 or so we forked over for
>a lousy program (PenPal I believe.. we have since moved to Excellence!
>but I'll talk about that later...)  I wanted to get access to this
>hoard of software that was assumed to exist somewhere...  Right.  
>I can tell you right now why major software developers aren't going for
>this machine -- since businesses are large purchasers of equipment,
>they are not going to buy a machine if something as simple as Wordprocessing
>is hard on the eyes.  Scrolling down the screen is even worse...

Buddy, why did it take you $3000 out of your pocket, BEFORE you found
this stuff out?  I usually fund purchases based on available software
and hardware capability (I write quite a bit of SW for my personal use).

I certainly wouldn't plunk hard earned cash without investigation.  Just
because you didn't investigate the situation doesn't make the Amiga a
"bad" computer OK?

>
>Excellence is yet another story.. We bought penpal from a dealer in
>saint john who we asked "does this have footnotes.. this is very
>important"   "Oh yeah, he said.. of course.. this is a good program."
>After paying $200+ for it... Sorry.. maybe no footnotes afterall.
>

Go bite his knees and ask for a REFUND! :)

>And thanks to the writers of penpal for their wonderful customer support.
>Not a PEEP after we sent in our card.  No  "extras" disk that we
>promised...  Anyways...

Bite their knees too!

>
>Excellence does footnotes but don't seem to want to configure them..
>and a new twist, the capital A key and the k key no longer produce
>the letters normally assigned... Kiss another few hundred bucks 
>goodbye...
>
>What do I do?  I am a student in engineering so I go looking for
>some good graphing programs, a spreadsheet, think I found anything?

Try GnuPlot, Tex, etc...  I am Grad Eng. and I'm gonna buy an Amiga
after looking at its capabilites. (I was waiting for 8 bitplanes
Yea!!!)

>Nope.  Except of course lots of pretty games.  What a nice game 
>computer, Commodore.  

Yep, and its nothing to be ashamed of.

>
>Yes, these are simple reasons but simple reasons are why people buy
>computers.  Businesses use them for simple tasks like printing out
>customer address labels, correspondence, even keeping financial 
>records..   Graphic artists, who are probably the only ones who even
>care about the such great multiitude of colours and graphics
>'capabilities' can probably complain about the slowness of the machine.
>
>If anyone wants to buy an Amiga.. please let me know.  I doubt we can
>even *hope* of getting anything remotely of value for it.  Maybe

You should have tried before the A4000 came out.  The whole line just
dropped a couple of notches down the price stick.

>I will trade it for a fishtank.
>

You could probably turn your 1084S into a fish tank, and use the A2000
for a doorstop.  That doesn't make it unsuitable for other people's WP/
spreadsheet/database applications.  True, there aren't LOTS and LOTS
of bells&whistles but what Amiga applications there are will satisfy
many personal users needs (perhaps not business, but than again I've
seen a lot of wool headedness in the "real" world too...:)  I hate it
when someone says XYZ.69 feature isn't present in Gronk and by GOD it
is a foundation stone upon which the rest of the package is worthless...

>
>To Commodore:  The VIC and the C=64 were wonderful machines.  Great for

So was the Pet :)

>introducing us all to the joys of what computers can do.  Amigas are a
>waste of time.  I can see the reasoning for the high support of the
>IBM line and clones.   I am not impressed at all with my Amiga.  I regret
>even wishing to support Commodore.  In the future, I do not plan to
>even consider commodore as an alternative and I intend to impress upon 
>any peer wishing to purchase an entry level machine.

Be objective.  Tell them what packages YOU use and why they don't satisfy
your needs.  Of course your lack of investigation into your OWN computer
purchase would tend to stretch your own credibility...


Charles C. Bundy IV
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy