Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 GARFIELD 20/11/84; site garfield.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsri!utai!garfield!john13 From: john13@garfield.UUCP Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm Subject: Thoughts on new 64, 1541, and Geos that you come up with at 4 AM. Message-ID: <1691@garfield.UUCP> Date: Tue, 12-Aug-86 07:49:49 EDT Article-I.D.: garfield.1691 Posted: Tue Aug 12 07:49:49 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 13-Aug-86 01:57:00 EDT Sender: perry@garfield.UUCP Reply-To: john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) Organization: Memorial U. of Nfld. C.S. Dept., St. John's Lines: 98 Keywords: Letdown. [] 64C: the case is much nicer, but the keyboard has been reduced to something like a toy. Great big letters, clickety clack keys, much worse feel than old 64. Why? Who knows? I've also seen 3 or 4 different types of lettering on old 64 keyboards, but none of them had such bad feel. 1541C: improvement? We don't need no stinkin' improvement!!! After all this time of telling people how the new 1541 would have a light-sensor to eliminate head clatter, you can imagine my disgust at the rattling it makes EVERY time you turn it on or reset the computer. First one unpacked and put on display went out of alignment AND overheated, it fails to load Paperback Filer and probably some others. I'd rather stick to my old 1541, which only rattles once in a blue moon when I boot up a copy-protected game from the Dawn of Time, instead of every 5 minutes or so. New manuals: haven't checked them out too much; I like the fact that they actually deal with more than hooking up the hardware and looking up Basic keywords in alphabetical order. Price: people who are looking for their first computer are staying away from the new 64's in droves around here. These are people who haven't heard about Quantumlink and Geos, and once they hear the higher price, they don't stay around long enough for an explanation. The only people who are interested seem to be veteran 64 owners who want Geos because they've heard so much about it. Quantumlink in Canada is not feasible yet, with the $9 per hour surcharge to connect through Datapac (yes, every hour!). If this could be eliminated, EVERYONE, I mean *EVERYONE* with a modem would be signed up tomorrow. Geos: a disappointment in many ways to me. I'd rather see a paint program stick to monochrome hi-res and do it *well* than try to imitate a Koala Pad and do it poorly. Or else go all out for multi-colour. Not fumble around somewhere in between. The Geos main screen lends itself to the worst colour bleeding I've ever seen, and the Preferences Manager seems unpredictable in its choice of colours - you set 'em up, but they usually just revert to what they were before. The word processor I like (for beginners - I would have been happy with it when I first got my 64). Joystick control is poor, why not have 256 different joystick speeds? And as for the "Real Soon" drivers for other devices - a 15 byte routine will return X & Y coordinates and status of button for a lightpen. Same for Koalapad, I would guess. If worry is about lightpen compatibility, how tough can it be to have one 15 byte routine for Koala lightpen, another for Flexidraw pen, etc? There is really no excuse for any delay in these! Same holds for printer drivers. Let's not get carried away with "beta-testing" things to death! Drive speed seems marginally better; the amount of disk access tends to negate this advantage, and the Berkely Softworks fast-loading routine's strange noises and light-flashing always makes me uncomfortable. Why not provide some sort of facility for Vorpal loading (from Epyx - the fastest software loading utility I've seen by several orders of magnitude)? I mean, let's get all the troops together on this one. Geos manuals: i'd really like to be more positive in this article; I really would. But the bad spots stand out so much! There are dozens of glaring misspellings in the Geos manual ("droping...visable...refered...occured") that almost leapt off the page at me as I casually browsed through it. Can it ever have been proofread??? I paid close attention only to the beginning, about how to begin to use Geos if you've never used a computer before; this is supposed to be the big advantage of Geos, how friendly it is to the first- time user. The first thing I encountered was the dreaded "back up your disk before using it" bit (shades of Big Blue!), a pet peeve of mine (2 master disks makes more sense to me). Reason: if you ever zapped your master, you could copy all the files back on to it. I can at least see the reasoning, even if I would do it differently. However, the next thing it suggests for you to do is scratch the Geos Kernal off your backup disk ("because it's already on the Geos master disk"). Maybe they intend for you to have numerous backups and work disks, but this was VERY UNCLEAR to me. Who knows, maybe a first-time user would be able to follow the instructions without making a fatal mistake, but I somehow doubt it. What else? The above thoughts all arose out of my initial impressions on Geos and the new 64. Since then, I've done some more fooling with the soft- ware. I like the calculator. I like the notepad. (But then I also like my Amiga ;-). I really dislike the paint program - the copy on the work disk has developed some problems where it doesn't fill properly and the colour selection is sometimes munged. Give me Koalastuff, Flexidraw, or Doodle anytime. The wordprocessor appeals to me as a way to introduce tyros to using a computer for printing. For the enlightened, I would love lots of keyboard shortcuts, with Amiga-style reminders in the joystick menus. The amount of time it's taking for anything Geos-compatible to come out still amazes me (this includes device drivers & applications prgs & revised versions of older prgs). *** SUGGESTION TO WHOEVER IS STILL READING *** : have Geos boot a program, leaving only enough code hidden under ROM (preferably $D000) to boot Geos back up again. That way your favourite game or whatever can go back to Geos when you quit. Memory-tight programs like word-processors or spreadsheets could incorporate their own loaders for re-booting Geos after you are finished with them. And new programs, written to run UNDER Geos could still access all the desktop utilities and such. Doesn't seem like too much to ask. Making a system LOOK like a more powerful one is all well and good, all the beta-testing and code no doubt ported straight from C sources on bigger micros and intensive disk access; yet this shouldn't be an end in itself. People (especially people with money to spend) respect the finer points of the software too (still can't get over how much the joystick control reminds me of Music Construction Set). John Russell, very sleepy owner of an old 64 (great machine) and fan of the Amiga (GREAT machine). Disclaimer: All opinions are mine, not those of...you know the routine!