Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!lll-winken!muslix!jac
From: jac@muslix.llnl.gov (James Crotinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Fair and equal Representation
Message-ID: <39251@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 22 Nov 89 16:18:35 GMT
References: <4539@lab.udel.EDU> <375@enuxha.eas.asu.edu>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Reply-To: jac@muslix.UUCP (James Crotinger)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/UC Davis
Lines: 44

In article <375@enuxha.eas.asu.edu> martin@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Ross D. Martin) writes:
>People at Commodore have been saying they had an educational program for 
>quite a while now.  I have never heard of anyone taking advantage of it.
>I have never heard any details.  All I have heard is that it exists.  Seems
>like vaporware to me.
>

  Actually there is apparently a CBM educational discount program. We
learned about it when we tried to get the MIT Microcomputer Center
(MCC) to pick up the Amiga a year or so ago. The problem is that it is
a discount to *educational institutions*, NOT students. That is, you
needed to have a purchase order to get the discount price.

  At the time what we (the MIT Amiga Users Group) wanted was for the
MCC to pick up the Amiga and offer a substantial *student* discount.
Alas it was not to be. First it went against their current educational
discount policy, and second, the MCC was unwilling to become a full
service authorized Amiga dealer. We tried to persuade Commodore to
allow the MCC to simply order Amigas for students, but not service or
even stock them. This idea went over like a lead balloon. CBM does not
want people who are not full service dealers selling the Amiga. (A
local Amiga store complained loudly that if MCC did this, they'd end
up supporting and servicing all these Amigas that they hadn't
sold...). I think CBM needs to be more flexible on this point. There
is a fairly active Amiga constituency at MIT and I think the machine
could be much more popular there if there was a good student discount.

  There have been short lived student discount offers in the past
(e.g. I got my 1080 monitor "free" when I bought my A1000, a discount
that was subsequently offered to just about everyone, and which wasn't
all that substantial anyway). But there doesn't seem to be a coherent
program in place. 

  I think that CBM could be a big hit on campuses if they had an
aggressive student discount program. As it stands, students at many
schools can get Macs for not much more than Amigas. 

>
>
>			Ross Martin
>			martin@enuxha.eas.asu.edu


  Jim