Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!unisoft!gethen!bdt!david From: david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Atari fair at Duesseldorf (West Germany) Message-ID: <379@bdt.UUCP> Date: 12 Sep 88 18:53:25 GMT References: <8809061721.AA27884@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Reply-To: david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) Organization: Beckemeyer Development Tools, Oakland, CA Lines: 44 In article <8809061721.AA27884@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> writes: >6. General impression >Nice coloured pictures, few hard facts. Games. A little disappointing. >When I talked about this to somebody at one of the booths, he said >to me: "What do you expect of a dying computer?" >7. Date >Sep. 2-4 >That's it, friends >Yours >Michael > Michael Eibl, Inst. f. Theor. Phys., Universitaet zu Koeln > Cologne, West Germany >ab084@dk0rrzk0.BitNet I've been hearing this "dying computer" attitude from dealers, distributors, and even some magazine publishers (always the last to go) for several months, but I've been reluctant to say anything because I feared it would be construed as nothing more than an attempted stab at Atari. It isn't. It truly appears that Atari has played out their last hand. According to reports from dealers and distributors sales have fallen dramatically. Personally BDT sales of Atari products have dropped to 1/5 the size of 18 months ago (this is partially attributed to a major de-emphasis of the Atari product line by the company) and today Atari product sales represent less than 20% of BDT revenues. BDT revenues from other areas are now financing Atari customer support. We will continue to support our Atari customers. But how many other companies have alternate sources of revenue upon which to fund Atari support? I bet not very many. So what's going to happen? What about the end-user? I think the consumer who paid hard-earned money in hopes of obtaining a useful computer system is the big loser here, especially those that have invested lots of hardware, money, and time on the ST. I guess in all this rambling one thing I'm trying to say is that all of us invested in Atari. Now what are they going to do for us? A long slow death is the worst for everyone, including the stock-holders. It seems to me that this should be a lot more troubesome to all of us than whether or not they have fixed the Malloc bug. -- David Beckemeyer | Beckemeyer Development Tools | "Reckon the Ball's plumb open now, 478 Santa Clara Ave, Oakland, CA 94610 | and it's `swing partner'!" UUCP: {rutgers,sun}!hoptoad!bdt!david |