Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sample.eng.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven.umd.edu!uvaarpa!vger.nsu.edu!manes From: manes@vger.nsu.edu ((Mark D. Manes), Norfolk State University) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: Commodore Business Machines Message-ID: <1128.2868758b@vger.nsu.edu> Date: 26 Jun 91 15:07:55 GMT References: <7471@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <1109.2865f0a9@vger.nsu.edu> <7516@vela.acs.oakland.edu> Lines: 117 In article <7516@vela.acs.oakland.edu>, lmbailey@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Laurana Bailey) writes: > In article <1109.2865f0a9@vger.nsu.edu> manes@vger.nsu.edu ((Mark D. Manes), Norfolk State University) writes: > | In article <7471@vela.acs.oakland.edu>, lmbailey@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Laurana Bailey) writes: > | > [Intro about CBM screwing up...deleted] > | > > | > > | > I once had big hopes for Commodore and the Amiga, but both seemed > | > doomed to stay a second class company with a second class machine. > | > When the rumors of the Hewlett Packard buy-out were floating around I > | > PRAYED it would happen! Whatever HP did with the Amiga, it would STILL > | > have been more than what CBM was doing. Same thing with the recent > | > Sony rumors. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE will someone with some > | > advertising BRAINS and interest in advanced R&D PLEASE BUY OUT > | > COMMODORE and get this thing MOVING in SOME sort of direction!?!? > | > | Funny I don't remember being flooded on tv or on the radio with > | HP and Sony advertisements. What makes you think they know about > | marketing? I think the "What If..." advertisements were just as > | bas as "Stevie" was. > > I have seen a heck of a lot more Sony ads than I have CBM ads. I saw a > Sony ad for their car CD players just today. I haven't seen a CBM ad > since last November. (And I saw very few last november.) The big > difference is that people know who Sony and HP are and they haven't > ever heard of Amiga let alone Commodore. (Oddly enough the folks at > the Oakland Press HAVE heard of Commodore, but mostly because we have > a few Commodore Canada Filing cabinets. Complete with the little red > and blue logos.) I would agree that most know about Sony, but I would not agree about HP. The only thing people may know (and I am talking the general public) is that HP makes printers. Selling consumer computers is a different ball of wax than selling machines in the mini-computer market. HP sells micros to companies who already have micros or minis. I wonder how many Vectra owners there are in the homes of America. Lets look at IBM. IBM was considered to be a giant in marketing. How well have the PS/2 series done? They spend tons on advertising, and yet most people buy clones. Why? > > | > | > > | > Enough of my ramblings. I've given up hope on CBM and the Amiga. I > | > will continue to use my machine happily until Commodore inevitably > | > dies off and then I will probably buy a Macintosh. Sure it's more > | > expensive, but there won't be a CBM around to offer anything better so > | > why sweat it. It's been fun Commodore, wish you would have done a > | > better job. > | > | Now that is the paragraph that gets my goat. The concept of the > | company and the machine being second rate because you think you can > | do a better job. It is not as simple as writing a check for advertising. > | It is not as simple as giving the Amiga 24 bit graphics as standard. > | If both of these things were done today it would make ZERO difference > | to anybody outside of the Amiga community. > > I didn't say that I thought I could do a better job. Perhaps I can't, > but I know that there are other companies out there who probably > could. When you compare how many IBM and Apple sales there are with > what is comparatively an inferior machine as to how many Amiga sales > there are with a better machine it should be obivious that somebody > somewhere at CBM isn't doing the right things. > > I never offered any suggestions to what CBM SHOULD do. I don't claim > to have any secret knowledge in that area. That's Marc's domain, not > mine.. I merely said that CBM isn't doing anything to promote greater > sales. Be it adding new features or even getting the beleaugered 2.0 > ROMs out. Nothing that would enhance the Amiga's posture in the > general market is being done and what little that is is small and > isolated to specific regions of the country. You said Commodore is screwing up, and implied that if they released 2.0, and put a ton of funds into advertising that their problems (and yours) would be solved. Is this not saying that you could do a better job?? > > | > | Commodore could help their dealers by doing more advertising, there > | is little question there. However, they could help their dealers more > | by providing better price protection and lower dealer prices on all of > | the cpu's. It would even be a great help if Commodore would reduce > | the number of reports required so that dealers can get to the business > | of selling computers! > > Now YOU are the one offering suggestions. I agree. Those would all > HELP and would MAKE SENSE, so why isn't CBM doing this? As someone that works at a dealership I am in a better position to make suggestions, and certainly we have told Commodore our thoughts. > > | > | It would not hurt Commodore's reputation any to pay to have some of > | the major software packages ported to the Amiga. It would do the > | Amiga community a great service if the problems between Commodore > | and Borland were solved. I would love QuatroPro for the Amiga! > > Again, makes sense to me. So why aren't they doing this? They are! They funded the development of SuperBase Professional 4! Perhaps I am just tired of the constant "Commodore screwed up" postings. I am hypnotized... :-) > Laurana > -- > /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ > |Just another lemming... | Yet another Amiga maniac set loose | > | | on the world...and you thought things| > |lmbailey@vela.acs.oakland.edu | couldn't get any worse. | -mark= manes@vger.nsu.edu