🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <907@ark.cs.vu.nl> Patrick@cs.vu.nl (Patrick van Kleef) writes:

>>"Let me make one thing perfectly clear": and I hope I'm not the only
>>one that says this: I'd love to buy new stuff from Atari such as the
>>laser printer BUT I need to have "a warm, fuzzy feeling" that Atari
>>will not treat us like dirt once we buy something - this means supporting
>>and upgrading existing owners of your hardware.
>
>[Quote from Sam Tramiel]
>"Upgrades? I just bought a new Ferrari last week. I only just found
>out there's gonna be a new engine in these cars. And I'm not gonna
>ask for an upgrade... People should be happy Atari is an active
>company, making new machines, staying in the business."

Look, folks, let's be reasonable. When IBM introduced the AT, they didn't
turn around and provide 286 upgrades for their PC customers. When Apple
introduced the 128K Mac, the upgrade price to 512K was exorbitant. Anyone
with any brains knows that as you take a computer out of the store you've
depreciated it by 50%. 

When I bought my 1040ST, I knew darn well that, since it had no expansion
slot capabilities, there wasn't much of an upgrade path. The price of
CAN$1599 more than made up for it. Over the past year, I've found the
machine so enjoyable and productive that I regularly choose it over a PC or
a Macintosh for text processing and programming. I figure I got my money's
worth.

Atari, like every other company, is in business to make money. They will
make more money by ensuring some degree of backward compatibility (such as
the apparent decision to ensure that the laser printer will coexist with a
hard drive on a 1040ST). They did a reasonable job on the TOS ROM upgrade,
and the imminent blitter/ROM upgrade (which my dealer quotes CAN$50.00 on). 
But I don't expect them to replace my machine every time it falls behind 
the current technology.