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****** SOAPBOX ALERT!!! SOAPBOX ALERT!!! ******

In article <1562@accelerator.eng.ohio-state.edu> rob@baloo.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) writes:
>
> I think there is another problem here.  While it looks as if Atari may
> start behaving marginally better for their future hardware, they still
> are leaving their existing customers out in the void.

Let's see: The Mega ROMS have come out. But Atari announced on the net
that they provided only a few bug fixes plus blitter support. Ergo,
they won't give you much in your 1040 and would be a waste of money.
Should Atari mail a card to every US owner inviting them to pay money
for nothing, especially when they plan a real upgrade in the future?
No, that would be stupid. What you _REALLY_ want is for them to
finish TOS 1.4, do a really good job, and then mail you a card.

The blitter chip hasn't come out to fit old 1040s; from what they've
been saying all along, the chip yield is too low. I believe that it
would be good if they could fix that and retrofit old machines, but if
they don't have them they can't announce them. Should they mail all
old users a card saying ``We have these great chips but can't sell you
one?'' What you _REALLY_ want is for them to get the cost down so
they can do this.

GDOS is out, and you can buy it with any of a number of software
packages. I wish they'd release it to non-commercial developers so we
could write software to use it, but since developers are a tiny
fraction of the total ST community, it would be STUPID for atari to
mail a card to everyone when most users wouldn't be interested.
What you really need is to understand what GDOS is.

And, finally, if you think you NEED a coprocessor (not that the
average user does enough floating point to need one), contact GFA or
talk to your German friends. That one is for 520/1040 machines.
You probably don't even really want this: it's expensive and few
people need the extra performance.

What's the point? How can you and I read the same newgroup and get
such different information? I may not agree with some of Atari's
actions, but at least I've kept my eyes open. Why don't we talk
about something useful on this group instead of discussing
misinformation and misconceptions? Why do we spend so much time
second-guessing Atari's busines strategy in silly ways?

If all non-commercial developers on the net got together and said,
``Release GDOS to us so we can use it and distribute it with our
p.d. software'', then Atari might listen. But if we start making
demands like ``Well, you really should have built a Mac IIx instead
of the Megas and because you're so STUPID I'm never going to recommend
Atari again'' then we're gonna get ignored.

step,
   step,
      step down off that soapbox.

3 more days 'till my qualifying exams.

-- greg

------
Greg Lindahl                |      Graduate School:
gl8f@virginia.{edu,bitnet}  |      It's not just a job,
 ...!uunet!virginia!gl8f    |      It's an indenture.