Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!att!whuts!homxb!homxc!doug
From: doug@homxc.UUCP (D.SULPY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Info for new AMIGA owner needed...
Summary: What happened to the INFO FOR NEWUSERS thing discussed a while back?
Keywords: help amiga
Message-ID: <4052@homxc.UUCP>
Date: 3 Nov 88 15:38:31 GMT
References: <1206@leah.Albany.Edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 50

In article <1206@leah.Albany.Edu>, jac423@leah.Albany.Edu (Julius A Cisek) writes:
 
 Hi. I just sold my 3yr old ST system and purchased the Amiga 500. But  I
 need some info to help start me off....
 
- - - - - - -

 I'm in just about the same boat as this poster. Having finally purchased
an A2000, I find myself in need of some very basic kind of information
which will help me make productive use of the thing (All the User's
manual seems to want to do is to teach you to use the Workbench, which
I'm going to try and avoid as much as possible). 
 A couple of months ago there was talk about setting up something which
would answer frequently asked questions by new-users (perhaps this is even
one of them). Did that ever come about? If so, where can I find it?
Some of the major questions seem to be:
 1) Gee. I just spent $1500.00 and Commodore doesn't see fit to throw
in a DOS manual. Do I get the official thing, or is there something
better out there I should use?
 2) The address to obtain Fish Disks. 
 3) What kind of Hard Drive attaches to this thing? What's a controller?
Will it blow up my Amiga? How much does it run, and what's a good kind
to get?
 4) What's the word on MIDI out there? What should I attach? What are
you people using? What are you happy with? How much does it cost?
 5) Etc.

General Observations:

Obviously, there are a number of good reasons to choose an Amiga 2000
over a 500. But is it worth the extra amount of money? Taking into
account the fact that the two are basically the same machine in 
different boxes, I'd say no. HOWEVER, taking into account the frequent 
quality complaints here on the net about the 500 - it seems as if you'd
have to buy a 2000 just to have a reasonable chance of the thing WORKING.
Is this unjustified, or is it simply a case of reading 50 bad stories, 
where there are 10,000 GOOD stories which aren't told? I'm actually
frightened for the health of my 1084S monitor. Has anybody had a
good experience with this thing, or is it just a matter of time
(like 91 days?) before it hits monitor heaven...

One final note:
Quality Control (or the lack thereof) is evidently not restricted to
the 500. The 2000 I got has the famous shrinkwrapped keyboard cable
(some kind of RF modification? What's the story behind this?), and
came with the disk drive mounting screws loose.

One final, final note:
Is New Jersey the only area of the country that has trouble stocking
the 1.3 software? It's not here. Anywhere. Honest.