Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!aurora!eos!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!weaver
From: weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Andrew Weaver)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Atari no-support?
Message-ID: <7381@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 29 Feb 88 01:46:27 GMT
References: <192@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> <864@usl-pc.UUCP> <1003@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <3334@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <318@nunki.usc.edu> <153@bdt.UUCP> <345@nunki.usc.edu> <1260@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Organization: OSU College of Business...where the fun starts
Lines: 56
Keywords: customer relations

In article <1260@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> ccs011@vega.ucdavis.edu.UUCP (Bill Frazer) writes:
>>>And who at Atari is listening?  That's a good question.  But even better:
>>>what would they do about it anyway?
>>>
>>>To really discuss this, we need a new newsgroup:  comp.sys.atari.flame
>>
>>  No, what we ALL need is what should have been there all along: A
>>*DIRECT* pipeline to Atari's top management.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>                    HA! HA! HA! HA!
	Ha ha ha is right.  Should have been there all along is a relative
thing.  It would be nice for us, the consumers.  But it would be a royal
pain in the a*s for the upper management at Atari.

	I can just see a lot of people harping at Tramiel and Co. in the early
days, when Tramiel had dumped a large amount of funds into what seemed to
be a financial black hole to everyone else - a company millions of dollars
in debt, not to mention the company itself split into three, non-cooperating
spheres of influence: home computers, home gaming systems and coin-op
systems.

	The argument about any PUBLIC service having things like direct
feeds to upper management is correct, unfortunately Atari Corp., while
a public corporation stock-ownership-wise, is still largely owned and oper-
ated by one family.

	Granted, Atari has pulled off some major public relations disasters
("Moses PromiseLAN"?  I mean, in the immortal words of Ms. RIvers, "CAN WE
TALK?") but they have delivered the company from bankruptcy to a state of
at least semi-coherency.

	This is not meant to curb the current flame war, no, my ST lies
broken and near death in my bedroom back in the dorm.  I am not precisely
sure what is wrong with it, but it looks as if a motherboard swap (if the
old $95 deal is still on) is the only financially feasible way of 'repairing'
it.  C'est la vie.

	Tell you what though.  If Atari wants to get involved in "other 
markets" as Mr. Dodd implies with the '030 box and the Abaq transputer,
they better get a real attitude about customer support, and fast.  Or there
possibly will be no more Atari to flame after they dump a couple hundred
million in a transputer project.

	Think I will just buy a new drive for my 800 and forget the ST
(half :-)



	

-- 
Andrew Weaver, OSU College of Business            weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
"OSU burns up and everyone dies."  -scifi	  soon:    weaver@osu-pisa.UUCP

"What's the watermelon for?"     "I'll tell you later." -- from Buckaroo Banzai