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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: New Atari Toy Computer - getting down to business.
Message-ID: <2904@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Jan-86 00:56:07 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.2904
Posted: Tue Jan 28 00:56:07 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jan-86 04:31:02 EST
References: <37@sbcs.UUCP> <26600016@ccvaxa> <356@ccivax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:1737 net.micro.atari:2588

With regard to the argument over whether the amiga can be considered a
business computer:

I think it's largely a question of attitude.  One place I have worked at had
an existing stock of CT workstations which were used for minor word
processing, and occaisional use of traditional business products such as
Multiplan.  Then a few Macs showed up.  These proliferated rapidly when it
was discovered that that they multiplied productivity of graphic design and
project planning spectacularly.

THe problem I see in the marketplace is that, sad to say, the is a great
lack of imagination as far as the use of these machines is concerned.  When
the IBM PC came out, people thought of business products as things like
Visicalc, Profitplan, and like things: things that people had always done on
mainframes, and which they now were bringing into their offices.  The one
real advance at this stage was the spreadsheet method; other than that, no
one stopped to think what kinds of things they could do.  In this respect,
the PC was the perfect business machine; it was merely a scaled-up,
incompatible version of the CP/M machines already in existence, with "IBM"
on the wrapper to make it socially acceptable.

So when the Lisa came along, and then the Mac made it affordable, relatively
few people jumped at the chance to be able to do a lot of radical new
things.  Certainly part of the failure had to do with marketing.  But I
think that, given the obvious application to a lot of business tasks, the
greater part of the fault lies in the lack of imagination of the business
community.

C. Wingate