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From: dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: The whole silly Amiga/Atari battle
Message-ID: <1002@loral.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Jan-86 15:33:15 EST
Article-I.D.: loral.1002
Posted: Wed Jan 15 15:33:15 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jan-86 07:20:08 EST
Reply-To: dml@loral.UUCP (Dave Lewis)
Distribution: net.micro.amiga
Organization: Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
Lines: 49

---------------------------------------------

  I have finally had my fill of this Amiga <--> Atari 520ST debate. All of
you folks who have been bitterly disputing the relative merits of these fine
machines are missing a major point -- BOTH are orders of magnitude better
than their competitors. Arguing over Dhrystone runs of 1,100 vs. 950 when the
best an IBM PC can do is about 400! Really now.

  The Amiga is for the buyer who wants everything. Maximum performance,
maximum versatility, maximum expansion potential. Naturally, there is a price
for all this -- it's about $1800. The Atari buyer is willing to settle for
a little less of each to save some money. Both machines are so far ahead of
any other competition that they are really alone in the market, their only
serious rivals each other.

  I for one am glad to see two such high-performance machines introduced so
close together. Each will stimulate the other to evolve as their builders
strive to outdo the `other guy', and this will result in even better perform-
ance from both machines in the future.

  I have seen some complaints about Atari's and Commodore's advertising, and
think they are a little out of line. The biggest market for computers is in
business, and you don't get that market by appealing to the intelligent buyer.
The IBM PC's success is positive proof of that! The IBM seemed to have nothing
going for it. Poor performance, high price, inconvenient OS, etc. What it did
have was a lot of hype and a huge parent company that would do anything to sell
it. Consider an IBM minimally configured for business applications. 500k of ram,
two disk drives, monochrome display and monitor, printer. For the same price
you could get a Sage that would outperform it by 200-300% in every way, better
disk drives, more memory, two terminals,and it would support multiple users to
boot. What intelligent buyer would even consider the IBM? The people that
decide which computer a business will buy, however, are not engineers, not
programmers, not technically oriented at all. They are accountants, managers,
marketing types. They are constantly surrounded by hype in one form or another.
They will not even consider this awful alien, the product without hype whose
only qualification is that it does the job best.

  Advertising and hype (the two are almost inseparable) are necessary evils
which you must endure to sell to these people. Don't blame Atari and Commodore
for this; they're doing what they have to do.

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		Dave Lewis    Loral Instrumentation   San Diego

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 Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out of it?