Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!olivea!apple!portal!cup.portal.com!Lee_Robert_Willis From: Lee_Robert_Willis@cup.portal.com Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Still no Ami businessware. Message-ID: <39774@cup.portal.com> Date: 3 Mar 91 20:59:26 GMT Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 90 This is a copy of a letter I have just sent to CBM. (Let the FLAMES begin!) Lee R Willis Loral Defense Systems 590 Eleanora Drive Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223 Commodore Amiga 1200 West Wilson Drive West Chester, PA 19380-4231 Dear Sirs, I bought my Amiga 500 in 1987 and have been very pleased with it. It's a great little machine. The A500 has been my machine to play on. ('play' being defined as creating art, music, ray-traced animations, etc. Not video games). There are a lot of fun things the A500 does that simply can't be done on a standard PC. Because of this, I have sung the Amiga's praises far and wide. I'm sure my associates think I'm a bit of a fanatic on the subject. Recently I decided that I needed a business computer. (I'm a software engineer at a defense contractor, and as such, I produce a lot of paper, from 1 page memos to 500 page design documents, all of which are usually filled with flow charts, data flow diagrams, etc..) Since I like my A500 so much, I bought an A3000. I checked all my back issues of AmigaWorld, and bought what looked like the best word processor (ProWrite, by New Horizons), and the only structured drawing program (ProfessionalDraw, by Gold Disk). I thought a top-of-the-line Amiga outfitted with some real business software would be better than (or at least as good as) the standard office PCs or Macs. Boy, was I wrong! ProWrite does not handle footnotes, endnotes, paragraph numbering, multiple columns, or structured drawings. All of these features are necessary for professional work. Plus, its print quality is horrid (as you can see). So I started checking into the other Amiga word processors. There aren't any that fulfill the above requirements! WordPerfect comes closest, since the only feature it lacks is graphic and multiple font support. (WordPerfect 5 has this, but is not available for the Amiga.) Unfortunately, WordPerfect has a poor user interface. This is pathetic. These features have been available for years on PC and Macintosh platforms. I can create a more professional looking document on an ancient PC XT using Lotus Manuscript than I can on my 25 Megahertz, 68030 powered A3000. As for ProfessionalDraw, it is actually very powerful for doing Desktop Publishing. I don't want to do Desktop Publishing. I want to do simple structured drawings, such as Data Flow Diagrams. ProfessionalDraw is lousy for this kind of work! It's too slow. There is no simple way to put arrowheads on the ends of lines. Text takes forever to display. etc. Unfortunately, its the only game in town. ProfessionalDraw is the only structured drawing program for the Amiga that is not targetted at CAD work. Normally I wouldn't bother chewing your ear off over software you didn't write. The A3000 is a great piece of hardware, and you did a wonderful job on AmigaDOS 2.0. But a computer is nothing without software. Word processing and structured drawing programs are a must! This complete lack of competent business software is a serious problem for the A3000. While I have recommended the A500 to many people, I cannot recommend the A3000 to anyone. If I had realized how poor the Amiga word processors were, I would have purchased a PC or Mac instead. Granted, they don't multitask, but they can do the work I need to accomplish. It makes no sense to spend over $3,000 for a computer without a decent word processor. CBM desperately needs to woo some software house to write or port some professional business software. I sincerely hope this situation will change in the near future. In the meantime, my only hope of building an office environment on my A3000 is to buy AMAX. Sincerely, Lee R Willis