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From: ali@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga's Enemy: Another View
Message-ID: <318@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Tue, 19-May-87 10:34:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky.318
Posted: Tue May 19 10:34:36 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 02:50:32 EDT
References: <487@gryphon.CTS.COM> <1757@vax135.UUCP> <2287@tekgvs.TEK.COM> <3611@cbosgd.ATT.COM> <1291@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: ali@rocky.UUCP (Ali Ozer)
Distribution: world
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 83
Keywords: We need more exposure (besides all these TV ads!)

In article <1291@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Ross Miller writes:
>Another enemy of the Amiga, as lamented by a dealer friend of mine, is that
>the dealers do not make a significant profit.  How can you expect a
>dealer to be interested in the machine when he is more likely to make
>money selling a clone and the expensive software that goes with it.

Well, then one solution to that is to get Amigas sold in university 
bookstores, as a part of the university's computers-for-every-student
(or whatever it's called) plan. Most such programs are nonprofit, right?

Here's a message I had sent out to the net about a month ago,
except I don't think it ever got out, as Rocky (our host)
was flakey those few days (and was dropping incoming and outgoing Usenet stuff
all over the place). I also did not get a single response! (Well, maybe no one
liked my message enough to respond...)

Oh well, here's what I said back then:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Atari just gave Stanford two 520STs and four 1040STs. Reason? They 
want to hire Stanford students to do game testing and possibly
development on these machines. And of course a lot of students were
interested in being hired. The problem is, even my boss, who is very
influential in a lot of the decisions concerning undergraduate CS
education at Stanford, was interested. Why? Because he is interested
in providing the "most diverse" form of education possible, and now,
finally, he has affordable (ie, free) color microcomputers on which he
can have students do color stuff (which they couldn't on the Macs,
most of which were also obtained free)... The Atari person who was here
(Tramiel's son!) brought along some programs, including a paint program, 
a lot of people were impressed with the ``wonderful'' color graphics
provided. (FYI, 320 by 200 resolution with 16 colors.)

I push the Amiga at every opportunity I get, and my boss realizes it is a
great machine, and that it is much better than the STs, but he just can't
go out and purchase six Amigas and development systems. If he did,
or, if we SOMEHOW got a few Amiga systems with the bare minimum 
development software (all that's needed is compilers, everything else
can be had PD), there would definitely be enough people willing to teach
courses on them (courses like "using the Amiga," or "programming
the Amiga," or something more general, like, "programming under
multitasking," etc, etc...).

Anyway, I am not asking anyone (ie, Commodore-Amiga) to donate Amigas
to Stanford, mainly because it just would not be fair to give Amigas
to just one school, and donating machines to many schools might get to
be too expensive. I think the problem is more a problem of exposure.
An average Stanford student might never see an Amiga, while he or she
will see and use the Mac and the PCs quite a bit. Of course, there are
people who have Amigas around campus, and from what I hear, they
do a good job of presenting the Amiga to their dorms and stuff, but when
the time comes for a student to buy a computer, he or she goes to the 
bookstore, sees the Macs and the IBMs sold at prices lower than those outside
of campus, and obviously chooses among those two machines. 

Now I hear that Atari has been trying to get the STs sold through the
same program, with some discount (a color 520ST system for $600, for
instance). Apparently their proposal was refused (I don't know why),
but they will be reapplying soon. Now, wouldn't it
be great if Commodore applied too? If they did,
I could get my boss to put some pressure into getting the right
people into accepting such a proposal. And, of course, such a program
should be made available at all schools providing similar discount
programs. The A500 lists for $650, and the 1080 monitor lists for
$500 (still). But we all know you can buy the 1080 for as low as $260, and
the A500 will probably be available for $600 or less. If
Commodore would make these two available through the bookstores for
say $800, they could sell a lot to students, and, more importantly,
get a lot of exposure. And a price tag of $800 isn't really any lower than
what the machine will be selling for anyway, so it's not all that unfair
to off campus people. And,  as I said once before, I myself would not mind 
spending some time demoing the machine at the bookstore, and
I am sure many of us feel the same way. Thus Commodore might not have to
provide paid representatives at every school --- there might be
enough volunteers among us...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway, not much has changed since then, except I had a chance to give my boss
an Amiga demo this past weekend, and he will be writing a letter to 
Commodore-Amiga trying to get them to enter this educational market...
I hope it works out, but it will require some cooperation from Commodore.

Ali Ozer, ali@rocky.stanford.edu