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From: gyuri@cvl.UUCP (Gyorgy Fekete)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari,net.micro.cbm
Subject: Re: Atari 520ST vs. Commodore Amiga
Message-ID: <671@cvl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 15:26:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: cvl.671
Posted: Mon Jul 29 15:26:01 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 04:26:03 EDT
References: <683@umd5.UUCP>
Reply-To: gyuri@cvl.UUCP (Gyorgy Fekete)
Distribution: net
Organization: Computer Vision Lab, U. of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 33
Xref: watmath net.micro.atari:972 net.micro.cbm:1574


I have recieved the 520 ST development package, so if you want any questions
about the DRI system, please ask.

I also saw the AMIGA at SIGGRAPH '85 last week, and it seems very nice.
It looks like an IBP PC: Big box, detached keyboard and separate monitor,
but the resemblance ends there. The crowd was tremendous, so I did not get a
chance to play with it much. The keyboard is perfect! I like it better than
the ST, but that's pretty good too. It has more colors -- I forget how many
simultaneously--and digitally sampled collection of waveforms which was
hooked up to a demo playing music using the keyboard (qwerty, not piano).
They said they'll ship September 1 to dealers. Check MBI (mathbox).

The system seems MS-DOS-ish, but can run desktop stuff too. The nice thing
is that you dont have to run the desktop unless you want to. By the way, for
ATARI ST developers there is a utility that frees up extra RAM by throwing
out the GEM desktop, and lets you run the ST like a CPM/68k machine.

The bucks: 1295 for system with 256k, one floppy drive. No monitor.
Color monitor is about 395, plus add another 200 512k upgrade. So you are
talking around $2000 for a 512k color machine, as opposed to about $1000 for
an ATARI 520 ST with color. Which one is better? Who can tell. Economy was
my greatest concern, so I am happy that I got the ATARI. If I had the other
$1000, I would have gotten the AMIGA, maybe.

-- 
Gyorgy Fekete --- University of MD, Computer Vision Lab, (301) 454-4526

gyuri@cvl.{ARPA,CSNet}

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