🚀 go-pugleaf

(Sorry I accidently sent out a broken copy of this)
Reading the reports on the CES and the previews of stuff to be
shown at CeBit in Germany, I can't help wondering if the ST line
of computers has a future in the current form. My slightly
negative remarks naturally are relevant only to the european situation:
 
     -If Commodore can deliver the A500 (Amiga in a 1040ST like
      box with a redesigned keyboard) for the price which has
      been mentioned in the mags the 1040 is just dead. I just can't
      think of a reason to still buy one. Atari would have to bring
      the price down to about half of what it is now, to have any chance
      at all of still selling the 1040. Now you might say: 'But there
      are the Mega-St's, what about them?'. We all know that they are
      just a repacked 1040 with some cosmetic changes, which should
      have been done for the 1040 in the first place and for 99 percent
      of all 'non programming' users 1 MB is enough memory (not counting
      the use of a Mega-ST as a laser-printer controller).
 
     -The one real advantage of the ST over the Amiga: The
      monochrome monitor has  successfully been destroyed
      by Atari with the introduction of the "less quality for the
      same money" SM125 monitor, the local shop used to have to
      check the SM124's it got for maladjustment, now they have
      to check the SM125's if they work at all! And the picture
      quality is about the same of the worst IBM-PC monitor I've seen
      (monochrome naturally).
 
     -There have been no fundamental advances in the capabilities
      of the ST series over the last one and a half year, in fact Atari
      has changed  to a major manufacturer of vaporware: nobody
      will denie that the chances that the blitter chip will ever be
      finished are practically zero and that the MS-Emulator is just
      a laugh (YES, I have seen them at exhibitions, but that doesn't
      change the vaporware status!). What makes a lot of ST owners
      grit their teeth is that the money earned from ST sales and
      the efforts of the Atari hardware development team has gone
      in to, of all things the Atari PC! Just think what the ST could
      be like now, if Atari had done all that work on the ST line!
 
     -The more advanced 68000 market which supposedly the Mega-ST's
      are aimed at, will be buying (if they don't go for Apple) the
      Amiga 2000, a machine with open architecture and PC compatibility.
      As far as I could see from the previews this machine solves
      all hardware problems there were with the Amiga 1000. Does Atari
      have anything comparable: no! (BTW this machine is not vaporware,
      Commodore Switzerland offered us one in place of the Amiga 1000
      we are testing now).
 
     -In software support of the ST line Atari has failed totally:
      any company I can think of is able of producing some kind
      of OS documentation that earns its name in one and a half
      years, but not Atari. And then all those not and probably
      never fixed bugs in GEM and TOS, and I don't mean the 40
      folder bug, I mean things like the file selector underscore bug
      or the bugs in the RS232 interrupt handler where it is just
      unbelievable that they can't be fixed in a reasonable time.
 
     -Even if Atari has some new 68000/68020 machines in development,
      I just don't think there will be any market left by the time
      they will leave the lab, if ever.
 
 
Conclusion:
  If Atari can't turn up with some real advances in the ST line
  real soon now, I don't really see any perspective for the ST
  line in a year or so. The matter would be different if Atari had
  managed to create a loyal following of ST owners, but the way
  the pioneer buyers have been hit by the NON upgrade policy
  of Atari, I consider that highly unlikely.
 
 
The thing that I would like most, is for Atari to prove me wrong!
 
                        Simon Poole
                        K538915@CZHRZU1A.BITNET
 
PS:
In article <835@ubc-cs.UUCP> manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (Vincent Manis) writes:
>........................ They did a reasonable job on the TOS ROM upgrade,
>and the imminent blitter/ROM upgrade (which my dealer quotes CAN$50.00 on).
>........^^^^^^^^
         |
         you don't really believe that?
Even if the chip and the TOS rewrite would be finished now:
      2-3 months beta test with TOS on disk, distribution to developers
      1-2 months starting of production of blitter and roms
          for the Mega-ST's (Europeans: add half a year here)
      2-3 months production absorbed by new Mega-ST's and new 1040's
      1-2 months production of a board to retro-fit
          the old Mega-ST's (quote Data Welt's interview with Shiraz Shivji:
          "The Mega-ST's can be fitted very easly with the blitter-chip",
          (translated from the german interview)).
      2-3 months production of a board for the old 1040's (if possible!)
      ---
     8-13 months before you can even think of getting the blitter for
          an old 1040.