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From: cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Christopher M Mauritz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Why it is not power without price anymore?
Message-ID: <1990Oct19.141027.28420@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: 19 Oct 90 14:10:27 GMT
References: <3375.271cee3c@cc.helsinki.fi> <65661@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Sender: news@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (The Daily News)
Organization: Columbia University
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In article <65661@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> kclenden@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Kevin Clendenien) writes:

>>I think something has to be done. (And I wish something will be done,
>>since there is lots of nice software for the ST, too.)

Ah, but will they do anything?  Will it be in time?

>>				Jouni

>Oh come off it!  I have a catalog from J&R Music World in front of me.

My my, aren't we testy?  You neglect to mention that these prices do not
include a monitor.  Besides, Jouni was speaking about POWER without the
prices.  Five year old technology in a repackaged box is NOT power.

>Here are two prices it shows:

Oh boy!  Actual numbers to play with.

>  Atari 520ST-FM
>  68000 processor
>  512KB RAM
>  Built-in 3.5 inch disk drive
>  $329.95

So what?  Add in $200 for mono or $300 for color and you finally have a
usable system (for about $600).  Why don't you explain to me what "powerful"
things you can do with a 512K 520ST these days with a 720K drive and no
hard disk?  If you spend an extra $100 for the color monitor, you can play
games with it.  If you don't spend the $100, you can do a little word
processing (if you have small documents), but then you lose most of the
games.

>  Atari 1040STE
>  68000 processor
>  1MB RAM
>  Built-in 3.5 inch disk drive
>  Blitter
>  Digital stereo
>  $599.95

Big deal.  You get the same as above with a little more memory and a 
Blitter chip to speed up screen re-draws.  Still no monitor.  With 
a monitor, you get $800 for mono and $900 for color.  (Hey, that's
funny.  I paid about the same for my 1040ST in 1986.  I'm sure
the components are FAR cheaper than they were back then so why is
the price unchanged?)

>When you can buy a mac for $600, you let me know.  Take a look at the 

Ahem, you CAN buy a Mac Classic with a 1.2 meg disk drive, 1 meg RAM
with its own little monitor for $749 (Computer Era in NYC).  You get
a ready to use system (keyboard included too) for this with a friendlier
OS and more software support.

>520ST-FM price.  A 68000 based computer, with a 720KB disk drive for
>$330??!!?  Jesus, what do you guys want, a miracle?

Yeah, but when you add in the cost of the monitor, the price isn't much
lower than a Mac Classic.  A $100 savings wouldn't make me want to buy
a relatively unsupported computer.

>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>kclenden@silver.bacs.indiana.edu                          Kevin Clendenien
>BLAST BBS - (812) 332-0573                                BLAST, President
>               "I want someone like you, only nicer."

Cheers,

Chris

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Chris Mauritz                 |D{r det finns en |l, finns
cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu   |det en plan!
(c)All rights reserved.       |
Send flames to /dev/null      |
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