Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ECNCDC.BITNET!UUCJEFF
From: UUCJEFF@ECNCDC.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: re: Atari support
Message-ID: <8805061426.AA20860@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 6 May 88 14:20:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 30

For all of you who have been ragging at Atari for its poor support,  it is
always the same reason, namely the Tramells.  Have it ever occured to you
that the reason it may not be as good as Apple or others is because that
the price of the Atari stuff is too low to provide enough revenues to
pay for the kind of support that you want?  Remember, this is America,
and no one gets away without paying.   To qualify this, let's look at some
of the big companies.  In my professional experience, I have found DEC
support to be the best.  However, with what we pay in 1 year for this support,
we could buy 10 1040 STs.  As for IBM, they are a real pain.  I once called
them to arrange repair of some mainframe terminals, and when I gave them
the serial numbers, they said Amoco owned them and insisted I was crazy for
saying otherwise.  And IBM will always try to sell you a machine that just
barely meets your requirements, push a bunch of hoggy software on you, so
you need to upgrade in 6 months.
If you want support to be as good as some others, would you be willing to
pay what you do to the others?

Now just for the record, I have phoned Atari for some technical support, and
of coursethe person wasnt in, and of course they said they'd call back, and
of course they didnt.  But other times I have gotten through, and they have
answered my questions.  And that isn't different than most other companies
I have dealt with.  Lately I have been trying to get through to Fairlight with
with the same result, and here is the Mercedes of the electronic musical
instruments manufactures.

I am happy with my ST, iuntil I win the lottery it is the best for musical
applications.  With the Hybrid Arts stuff, I will be able to make CD quality
masters at 1/10 the cost of synclavier, and that is cool.

Jeff Beer, UUCJEFF@ECNCDC