Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cunixf.cc.columbia.edu!cunixa.cc.columbia.edu!cmm1 From: cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Christopher M Mauritz) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Atari Financial condition Message-ID: <1990Mar22.071155.5496@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Date: 22 Mar 90 07:11:55 GMT References: <1990Mar21.215753.8966@chinet.chi.il.us> Sender: usenet@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (The Network News) Reply-To: cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Christopher M Mauritz) Organization: Columbia University Lines: 67 [Steve Jacobs' posting about Atari's health deleted] Whoa! I didn't say that Atari was going to close up shop tomorrow. What I mean is that they are going to be losing money for a while in the computer area of their business. Their R&D is just too far behind the competition. re: Portfolio I have heard from a friend who works at J&R Music World (they carry and sell a lot of Portfolios) that they are having a LOT of returned defective machines. Besides, who would buy one of the things for $400 when you can pay another $100 and get a very usable Toshiba laptop with standard size floppies, more memory and the availability of DOS versions above 2.1? Granted, the machine is small and cutesy and you can pop it in your briefcase, but it is rather fragile, expensive and difficult to type on. If it was $250 instead of $400 it could compete with the Sharp Wizard as a nifty little mini-electronic notebook, but it is too expensive and breakable for that. Honestly, what are those marketing guys thinking? re: STacy Now here is the sleeper of the year. If Atari can get these babies out the door and improve the battery life, they will have a winner. Hehe, it is funny to note that most of them will be used to emulate Macs. re: ATW What ever happened to this machine? It has been in developer hands for ages now and nobody seems to have written anything of consequense for it and you still can't buy one. re: Megas IMHO, this machine is going to die a slow painful death. It is impossible to develop anything for the critter as there are more board revisions out there than there are people named Jones. Just ask Avant Garde how much of a headache it is to prepare for this. I have seen 5 or 6 STs opened in my life and they all had different mother boards...tsk tsk... That is a no no if you want people to spend THEIR hard earned money to develop a product for your machine. re: 520 ST taking over the "cheap computer" market I don't think so. The Amiga 500 is about the same in price and is better suited to play games (which most people will do with a $300 computer anyway). Also, the Amiga is MUCH easier to upgrade if the user desires more power in the future. The poor 520st user has to throw his machine away and buy a better machine or pay someone to do a hardware hack (like an accelerator board). How many average home users will want this kind of hassle when they can just plug in new RAM and other goodies into an Amy. Also, Commodore is doing a MUCH better job at advertizing. Wow, this letter seems a bit harsh, but I don't think I've said anything that is grossly inacurate. If I have, please correct me. Atari's computers are going to be in the bottoms of America's closets if the company doesn't shape up. This would be awful. Send letters to the brothers Tramiel and bitch. I did! When that didn't work, I bought another brand. C'est la vie... Chris ------------------------------+--------------------------- Chris Mauritz |Where there's a BEER, cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu |there's a plan. (c)All rights reserved. | Send flames to /dev/null |Need I say more? ------------------------------+---------------------------