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Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Title:	AMIGA NOTES
Notice:	Join us in the NEW conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2
Moderator:	HYDRA::MOORE

Created:	Sat Apr 26 1986
Last Modified:	Wed Feb 05 1992
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	5378
Total number of notes:	38326

909.0. "December Computer Shopper" by LEDS::ACCIARDI () Tue Nov 17 1987 07:32

    The December issue of Computer Shopper just came in the mail.  The
    cover features an Amiga 500 sitting under a Christmas tree.  There
    is a big 'Best Buy of the Year' logo on the monitor.
    
    There are no less than 11 Amiga features in this issue.  Among the
    highlights:
    
    The 'Best Buy' award for a low cost computer went to the A500, along
    with rave reviews.  The 'Best Buys' are selected from reader surveys.
    
    There are two seperate, long reviews of the A500, one from a system
    standpoint, the other a summary of hardware add-on options.
    
    Wordperfect is reviewed, as is Kwickstart for the A1000, the InSider
    memory expansion, and Commodore's Genlock.
    
    There is a fairly length review of the the October AmiExpo held
    in NYC.  By their account, it was a resounding success, and both
    users and developers came away with a sense of excitement that has
    not been felt since the September 85 launch of the Amiga.
    
    The Letters to the Editor contained a rebuttal to an article
    in last months issue where the author claimed that the Amiga did
    not truly multitask.  The article's author, D.F. Scott, compared
    Intuition to Microsoft Windows.  He then went on to describe the
    operation system of the future, which would include transparent
    message passing, sharing of resources, etc.  D.F. Scott pretty much
    recited the specs of Intuition.  The editor replied that the letter
    writer was totally correct, D.F. Scott did not even one thing about
    the Amiga, and was pretty much full of s*it.  The editor then
    apologized for letting the article publish without the necessary
    corrections.
    
    That really irks me.  Some people will read that article and go
    repeat the author's claims as though they were carved into granite
    and handed down from God.  Sheesh...
    
    Anyway, this issue had more Amiga features than any other machine
    category except MS-DOS.  There were six Mac articles, three AppleII,
    four Tandy, one 8-bit Atari, and no ST features.

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
909.1	I heard a preview of this issue	TLE::RMEYERS	Randy Meyers	`Tue Nov 17 1987 08:03`	14
	Re: .0 It is sort of funny. While I was at AmiExpo, I happened to overhear the reporter for Computer Shopper talking. I had heard him mention that they had picked the 500 as best buy, and that they were desperate to beef up their Amiga coverage. I was amazed at all of this from a magazine that contains 300 pages of ads for IBM XT/AT clones. I happened to buy that copy of computer shopper that contained the "OS of the Future" article. I found reading it very painful given that the author obviously didn't know anything. This is a situation I found fairly typical of Computer Shopper. It seems to hire the most technically weak authors around.
909.2		BAGELS::BRANNON	Dave Brannon	`Tue Nov 17 1987 11:49`	27
	I believe in the editorial section is an appeal for authors for ST articles - their writer has gone off to grad school. I suspect the Amiga slant is due to a reader survey. Just as Byte determined that everyone wants to read about ibm pcs, Computer Shopper found that a sizeable potion of their readers were interested in new machines like the Amiga and ST. They also recently spun off a magazine called PC Clones. Glad to see that the editor is getting more Amiga knowledgeable. They are in a tough position, they want to publish more articles about the new computers, but don't know if a potential article is correct or just BS. That Best Buy of the Year on the cover referred to the Best Buy Awards, not to the A500. But it is looks good enough to hang on the wall of Amiga computer stores. The category it won was "Editor's Choice - Best New Low Cost Computer". The "Best Buy in a computer" and "Complete Computer System Award and Overall Best Buy Of 1987" went to some ibm pc clones. -Dave p.s. i wonder if increased number of Amiga articles is in part due to the plea on usenet to stop bitching about bad articles, and start submitting good articles - they can't publish what they don't have.
909.3	...	LEDS::ACCIARDI		`Tue Nov 17 1987 16:29`	19
	Re: -1 I read the reader survey a while back... as I recall, the results showed that the Amiga and ST were neck and neck in terms of readership; somewhere around 25% of respondants claimed that they were 'very interested' in the Amiga and ST. Yet, the ST coverage has progressively decreased in recent issues. It should be mentioned that the Amiga coverage, although large, is very, er, light reading, to put it kindly. Almost all the articles are written by Ervin Bobo, often (not so) affectionately referred to as Ervin Bozo. The guy has never said a bad word about anything. I remember he gave a rave review to a version of MaxiPlan that was so buggy that you could trash it by moving the mouse quickly! Computer Shopper reminds me of the old J.C. Whitney catalog; I always had one behind the seat of the 'reading room'. For some sick reason, I really enjoy having Computer Shopper around the house.
909.4		BAGELS::BRANNON	Dave Brannon	`Tue Nov 17 1987 16:59`	8
	re:.-1 Computer Shopper is also good if you like to read about what is being done with other computers. It is truely amazing the amount gross hackery that needs to be done on other computers to get the features we take for granted on the Amiga. -Dave