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From: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Buying an Atari computer
Message-ID: <855@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Feb-87 21:56:31 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.855
Posted: Sat Feb 21 21:56:31 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Feb-87 01:59:18 EST
Reply-To: manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science
Lines: 57

There has recently been a fair amount of traffic here of the following sort:
"Atari computers don't work, and the company doesn't support them properly.
My next computer won't be an Atari." Since the rule is that people who are
satisfied don't speak out, and because there are undoubtedly silent readers
of the group who are considering the purchase of an ST, I felt I ought to
speak out.

I've had a lot of experience with another company (let's call it Fruit
Computers, to avoid another one of those silly debates about which machine
is better) with whose products we stocked a 66-station student lab. Fruit
Computers' first machine didn't have enough memory, so they announced a
second machine with adequate memory, but at a cost of US$1000 for a 384K
upgrade! We bought their machines shortly before they announced the Fruit
Squared, with more memory and DS disks. No problem, there was an upgrade:
the disk upgrade is reasonable, but adding 512K of memory is still several
hundred dollars. Of course, Fruit software has no bugs (unlike Atari's):
their original Pascal compiler had many bugs, at which point they announced
a new version. Turned out that their compiler wouldn't work with their new
operating system, so they had to send it back for rework. There finally is a
fixed compiler which works with the system, but it still has many serious
bugs. Fruit's ZapWriter+, a laser printer, came with non-working ROMs. As
for vapourware, Fruit announced FruitNet, which would support file servers
and all kinds of other goodies. Only two years after this announcement, they
have finally actually shown a real file server. 

Re technical documentation: getting a copy of "Inside the Fruit", the
technical reference manual, involved repeated telephone calls to Toronto, as
none of the local Fruit sales people, all of whom wear expensive suits, knew
what it was. (Fruit had been selling a developer's kit, costing several
hundred dollars for a lousy C compiler and a thick wad of erroneous
looseleaf paper, but we wanted the real thing.) They finally published it, 
2-1/2 years after the release of the machine. (Commodore is to be commended
for getting its technical documentation out so early, but that's the
exception, not the rule.)

I'm not really knocking Fruit (they make good, if overpriced, computers);
but things aren't really much better with non-Atari machines in general (at
least in my experience), except for one manufacturer, the much-maligned IBM
(who *do* publish excellent technical documentation for their machines, and
the machine prices show it). It's also worth noting that many compatible
manufacturers (with Zenith being a notable exception) publish *no* technical
documentation, referring you instead to IBM documents.  

In any case, here's my point: I've had a 1040ST for almost a year. The
combination of the hardware, TDI Modula-2/ST, and some of the PD software
I've obtained from here (notably uEmacs 3.7, LESS, and ARC) make it my
machine of choice. (I happen to have both a Mac and an IBM PC sitting in
boxes--they don't belong to me--I just can't be bothered to fish either one
out of its box and set it up). I would gladly buy another ST (though I
might wait for the Mega ST!). 

Is Atari's support adequate? Well, Apple doesn't (to my knowledge) doesn't
run a public-access BBS (IBM does, though the number is a closely guarded
secret, apparently). When I used to be a member of the old fa.info-mac, I
don't remember anybody from Apple ever contributing anything (in fact,
Apple's net address was a matter of considerable speculation). Things could
be a lot better, but they could also be a lot worse.