Conference hydra::amiga_v1

I've been thinking about suggesting an expansion of the computer program at my
town's elementary school as well, though so far it's only an idea (i.e.,
budgeted at $0.00).

First, yes, the Amiga is (IMHO) the absolute best choice as an all-around
computer, both powerful and easy to use, as well as being the best bang for the
buck. But no, it isn't the most popular development platform for educational
software- people choose IBMs and Macs because they've been "accepted" (and
therefore have gobs of software written for them), developers write software
for them because people select them more often, and thus 'round and 'round...

On the other hand, packages like AmigaVision make it pretty easy for
"nonprofessionals" to write Amiga software which blows the doors off the "other
guys."

Take a long, hard look at the best each platform can offer. Go to dealers who
have a vested interest in showing off the machines' potential. Then make the
tough choice. I know that when/if I make *,y* proposal to the town, I intend
to focus on the Amiga...

Bob

    Bob,

    Since I pointed you over here, I'll start off the replies (hopefully there
    will be some). There is quite a bit of good educational s/w for kids 
    (there's also some junk out there as well). I'm not sure why those
    educational catalogs you mention don't list software for the Amiga. We
    receive them from time to time, and just recently one arrived which said
    on the cover: For the IBM PC, Apple II, Macintosh and Amiga. I was 
    impressed and wanted to see what they had for the Amiga, and disappointedly
    didn't find a single title in their listings.

    Commodore does put out a catalog of educational titles by grade level.
    I picked one up a few months ago at my local dealer (Omnitek in Tewksbury).
    It was fairly comprehensive. Commodore does appear to want to be more
    visible in the education market.

    A year or so ago, I tried getting my daughters' elementary school in
    Chelmsford to look at the Amiga. They contacted Commodore and did receive
    all sorts of literature and a video explaining the use of the Amiga in
    the classroom. But with budget cuts, all they've been able to do is
    buy software for their aging Apple IIs. They were impressed that for
    the price of a IIgs they could get 2 Amiga 500s. Would I recommend an 
    Amiga for my kids' school? Sure would. For a local dealer which has a
    good variety of educational packages that you can try before you buy,
    check out The Memory Location in Wellesley.

    I should also point out that with CDTV finally being marketed, and the
    availability of the A690 CD reader for the Amiga 500, there should be
    some educational CDs available as well. You might want to look into CDTV
    as well (I'll point you to some notes). Recently on usenet there was
    a posting listing all the CDTV titles (it may be reposted in one of the
    CDTV notes in this conference).

    As far as the games you mention, both SimCity and the Carmen Sandiego
    series are available in Amiga format. I've got some educational
    titles: Speller Bee, WordMaster, Great States II, Math Talk. My
    kids use them and have found them to be entertaining as well as 
    educational. 

    For some additional notes to look thru (this conference is nowhere near
    as well organized as the Mac conference), I can point you to the
    following notes. There's a conference directory in 9.1.

    For educational s/w:

    4006
    3559
    3084
    2483
    1072
    428

    For CDTV:

    4795
    4430
    4355
    3883
    3827

    -Dom
    

	First, the Amiga, especially the Amiga 500, is an excellent machine,
     costing less than all but the cheapest PCs and definetly less then the
     less expensive MACs.  The larger Amigas provide more capabilities at
     higher cost.  There is a Catch 22 though...

	While there is quite a bit of educational software available for the
     Amiga, including Carman (sp?), and even some unique to the Amiga, there 
     still isn't as much as there is on the MAC, Apple II or the PCs.  The 
     reason for this is that there are not as many Amigas in schools as there 
     are MACs, Apples or PCs.  Check the ads in the Amiga Magazines.  (You can 
     get good emulators that run on the Amiga, emulators that in some cases 
     are so good that they actually perform BETTER than the machine being 
     emulated, but they cost money.)

	If you can possibly afford it in terms of BOTH hardware AND software
     costs, I recomend that you get more than one kind of machine.  Given the 
     present environment, I would recomend that between 15 and 25% of the 
     machines be Amigas if you are dealing with the upper grade levels, less
     (10-15%) if you are dealing with the lower grades.  The numbers are only
     hunch type estimates, but reflect that the AMIGA is a very serious 
     machine for some kinds of applications, are good machines in terms of the
     capability available for the money invested, and that young people need to 
     understand that there are a number of different architectures around and
     that they should be able to deal with most of them.

Re: .0

I think that Amigas make great computers for schools.

In addition to the price and performance that others have already mentioned,
I'd like to emphasize a few additional points:

The Amiga has the easiest to use "authoring system" that I've ever seen.
An "authoring system" is a programming environments that allows people to
quickly develop programs that are highly interactive with fancy human
interfaces.  Since the programs are so highly interactive and can
incorporate many different kinds of media, many authoring systems avoid
using the word "program," and instead use words like "presentation",
"multimedia presentations", and "hypertext document" to describe what you
use the authoring system to build. Probably the example of an authoring
system that you have heard the most about is Hypercard for the Mac.

The authoring system for the Amiga written by Commodore (there are others
with different strengths and weaknesses available) is called AmigaVision.
Developing a program with AmigaVision is completely graphical: You move
icons representing different actions in your program into a flowchart,
and use the mouse to click on different dialogue boxes that open up.
There is no hidden script language (as in Hypercard).  The only time
you have to touch the keyboard is to add comments to your program or
because you want to cause your program to display some text.

AmigaVision can display pictures, play animations, play digitized sound,
play music, speak though the Amiga's built-in speech synthesizer, allow
a user to browse a text file in a window, control a video disk player,
run other Amiga programs, communicate with other programs running in the
system through the Amiga's interprocess scripting language, perform
mathematical calculations, access a data base, and write files.

From the programming development point of view, AmigaVision can perform
the normal flow of control operations: goto, if-then-else, subroutine
call, etc.

The really ground breaking thing is that a non-programmer in a few minutes
can be shown everything that he or she needs to put together something
like an interactive lesson.  This means that interested teachers that have
no background in computers could develop their own educational software.

The other thing exciting thing from an educational perspective is CDTV.
CDTV is an Amiga 500 built into a stereo component box with a built in
high speed CD/ROM (high speed for a CD/ROM: it's still much slower than a
hard disk).  A majority of the titles that have been published for CDTV
are educational CD/ROMs: encyclopedias, atlases, historical time tables,
etc.  A normal Amiga equipped with a CD/ROM can also use these CD/ROMs
(some of them are incompatible since they rely on the high speed of
the CDTV drive in order to do video from the compact disk).  CDTVs
cost about $1000 without monitor, and can be turned into an Amiga 500
by adding a keyboard, mouse, and floppy disk drive.  CDTV was just
introduced, and is only being marketed heavily in selected cities
while Commodore ramps up.  However, several of the local dealers
have them and can sell them to you.  I believe that there are about 50
CD/ROM titles available for it so far.

A third strength of the Amiga that hasn't been touched upon is that it
is the leader in the field of multimedia.  If the theater department
in your school system is interested in video, the video toaster card
($1500) for the Amiga 2000 would give them the ability to do professional
special effects, titling, editing, and computer created graphics.  It's
hot stuff.

The art department will love them very heavy support that the Amiga
provides for painting, animation, and 3D ray tracing.

I'd recommend that a school invest in:

	One or two Amiga 2000s with extra memory and hard disks to make
	it easy for teachers to create lessons with AmigaVision and to
	allow for desktop video work.  (AmigaVision requires more memory
	to create an application than to run it.)

	Lots of Amiga 500s for students to use.

	A few CDTVs to allow access to CD/ROM educational software.  The
	CDTVs could be upgraded into "real computers" when the optional
	keyboard comes out.

I've been picking up four British Amiga mags lately and find that they all
have columns on educational software.  Also, there are lots of PD houses
and most have edu software.

One reaction that I have had since getting involved with the Amiga is that
it is probably more attractive to younger kids than older kids since it
has lots of action and sound capability.  This was also the observation that
a computer dealer in the Harrisburg PA area had.  This dealer had been a
much more active Amiga dealer but now only carries the A500, while doing most
of their business in PC clones and software.  They are ramping up computer
classes for kids starting at the preschool level.  Currently they are using
day care centers for their class rooms and place A500s at the center gratis
assuming enough parents signup their kids.  For the price, you can't beat
the A500 for things that interest younger kids, action and sound.

For more advanced use, you know start talking about spending some significant
dollars on hardware and software.  While, to those who are experienced with
these things, the Amiga is very cost effective, its hard to argue with those
who point to all the ads in the paper for cheap clones.  Its hard to quantify
factors like it costing only about $150 to add digitizing capability to an
A500 assuming that you already have some video gear around.  And for grades
like high school, the students can probably put together hardware projects
that work with the A500 for next to nothing since all the ports on the
Amiga are bidirectional and programming them isn't a big mystery since
loadable drivers are supported and there are lots of articles in tech mag
on how to do it.  But the problem is that this is a technical matter that
is understood by technical people and can only be exploited by people with
no fear of diving into technical problems - something that doesn't seem
to be the case with a lot of teachers from what I see and hear but I don't
have any kids and therefore don't deal directly with schools.

Anyway, going the Amiga route is going to be somewhat risky unless there is
some good solid support for the use of it.  It won't matter that what can
be done with PCs, or Macs, is garbage, they are currently popular and there's
lots of junk available, so there will be the appearance of them being put to
good use.  With the Amiga, you run the risk of nothing being found for them
and as a result the stuff sits in the corner or gets used for a very limited
amount of stuff.

One of the projects that I'm trying to interest a coworker in is to `port'
the Apple II stuff to Amiga, and jazz it up on the way.  What I've done so
far is buy three Amigas, one for my brother's kids, one for a friend's kids
(I'm sort of a sarogate father to them), and an A3000 for my development use.
While I'm paying off that stuff, I've been looking into the tools and the
priorities are AMOS, a real killer basic with lots and lots of support for
action and sound, Cando, a multimedia package that has as its major advantage
over AmigaVision the ability to create execute only copies, and AmigaVision,
which is really nice by requires a license on every machine.  Then its a
matter of getting the PD and licenseware software from Britain for AMOS
and ditto for Cando packs there and here.  Hopefully, I'll be able to
get into cranking out stuff before the kids graduate....

One area that there is no contest is in the video area.  If your school has
any video related classes for students or supports the teachers in putting
together video material, then the Amiga is a real match.  For the cost of
the conventional switchers and related stuff to do simple video editing,
you can setup an Amiga with super video tools like the Toaster.

A small sidenote...

Here in the UK, we have 16 Amiga500s at Portsmouth Polytechnic which are used
for teaching 68000 assembler. They are popular machines, much better than the
QLs we used to use (although I did not suffer this burden, I have heard from
others that the QLs were awful).

I used to have a large amount of documentation about several Polys which used
Amiga2000s but unfortunately I threw this out when I moved house. As has been
stated CBM will supply excellent literature regarding Amiga & education, why
not write or give them a call?

Cheers.

								- JIM CAD*

    Re. 0:
    
>   I am a member of a town committee chartered to suggest what
>   direction our town should take in improving the school's
>   use of computers.   We have a small chunk of money to spend
>   (20-50K), and have been working for about 6 months.  We've
>   visited several sites (using PCs and Macs) and have a pretty
>   good idea what we want to buy.  But I have to admit, we have never
>   really considered the Amiga.
    
    Unfortunately, Commodore didn't jump at the right moment to capture the
    shift from Apple ][ systems to PC clones and Macs.  The Amiga is a VERY
    strong offering in this market, but it doesn't have the inertia of the
    PC & Mac camps.

>   I dont think its important to go into detail, but we are basically
>   looking for a good general purpose machine that is easy to use
>   and has a variety of good software to run on it.  the teachers all
>   have Apple II's, and would certainly like to be able to run their
>   old stuff on the new machines as well.  the PC and the new Mac LC
>   both support an option board for running the old Apple II software.
>   We've also looked at a bunch of nice tools like the Grolier's
>   Encyclopedia on a CD and some library administration packages
>   that all run on the PC and Mac.  Our teachers also use some
>   of the new simulation progams (on the apple IIs) like
>   Sim City and 'Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego?', that
>   have expanded versions for the PC and Mac.
    
    As several have pointed out, there are LOTS of educational programs for
    the Amiga, but they're still not as numerous or easily found as those
    for the PC or Mac.  If the intent is to maximize "bang for the buck",
    then the Amiga's educational pricing makes it a strong contender. 
    Consider the age groups that will use these systems and the type of
    features that are important to each.
    
    ALL students (and teachers) need easy-to-use human interfaces.  MS-DOS
    is notoriously poor in this area.  MS Windows 3.0 is okay, but still
    falls short of either the Macintosh or Amiga Workbench.  SOME students
    (and teachers) ALSO need a command-line interface.  MS-DOS V5 has come
    a long way in this regard.  AmigaDOS' shell is its equal -- add the
    inexpensive WShell and ARexx packages to get UNMATCHED versatility for
    "power users".
    
    Color and sound capabilities are also important, especially at the
    elementary level.  The Macintosh LC is at a severe price disadvantage
    in this arena.  The PC needs add-on sound boards that may or may not
    work with all the applications you buy/develop.  The Amiga provides
    both color and 4-voice stereo sound STANDARD; all Amiga graphic/sound
    software works on ALL Amigas.
    
    When it comes to Desktop VIDEO, the Amiga stands ALONE.  The Macintosh
    and PC add-on units (at $4000 each) to give the capability of NewTek's
    Video Toaster (a $1500 board that plugs into an Amiga 2000 to provide
    the equivalent of a $60,000+ video special effects system) are actually
    unmarked A2000 systems with the Video Toaster installed.
    
    IBM and Apple are starting to talk at length about "MultiMedia", but
    neither system can DO it "out of the box".  The Amiga is the only one
    of the three with the true pre-emptive multi-tasking that is essential
    to controlling simultaneous graphic, sound, application, and external
    input (laser disk, for example) activities.  AmigaVision, which is
    bundled with almost all educational packages, makes it easy to do ALL
    these things.

>   When i look through the software catalogues that the teachers
>   get, most of the software runs on PCs and Macs.  I dont think
>   I've ever seen any for an Amiga.  Am I just looking in the
>   wrong place?  Would you recommend the Amiga as the machine that
>   YOUR school buy for YOUR kids?  I dont want to dismiss it
>   without considering it....We are about to recommend the school
>   buy Macs.
    
    Indeed, the most common sources speak PC or Macintosh only.  I'm sure
    other respondents to this note can provide other sources.  Also, I'm
    assuming you'll keep your older systems for as long as they remain
    useful (I suspect you paid enough for them! 8^).  As another response
    suggested, you could buy a mix of new computers (a few of each, for
    starters) and see how each is received and what the REAL prices are
    (once you've bought some software and discovered you need more memory
    or an add-on board ...) for each, per student.

>   I've heard about the Amiga for a few years now, and everything
>   has been really favorable...all the things that it does right
>   that the Mac and especially the PC did wrong.  But there just
>   dont seem to be any around.
    
    Obviously, we're HIGHLY BIASED.  (We know a good thing when we see it!) 
    If the Amiga is given a level playing field, it stands up quite well. 
    In Europe, where the names "IBM" and "Apple" don't carry the same
    weight as they do here, the Amiga is #2.  There are now 3 million Amiga
    users, which is significant -- even if still a distant 3rd behind 60
    million PCs and 12 million Macintoshes.  I don't think the Apple ][gs
    (which so many teachers fawned over but costs twice as much as an A500
    while giving substantially less capability) ever broke 1 million.

	One or two Amiga 2000s with extra memory and hard disks to make
	it easy for teachers to create lessons with AmigaVision and to
	allow for desktop video work.  (AmigaVision requires more memory
	to create an application than to run it.)

You forgot to mention that AV flows can't be run on an Amiga 500 without
putting more memory in it than CBM intended. Also, every machine that
runs AV has to have a copy of AV purchased for it (or bundled with it).
While CBM has a player, it's not freely distributable, and the school
would have to buy a license to use it on the 500s.

Net result - AV will probably only be usefull on the 2000s.

Other application generators don't have these problems, so this isn't a total
loss.

	<mike

    Re .8:
    
>   You forgot to mention that AV flows can't be run on an Amiga 500 without
>   putting more memory in it than CBM intended. Also, every machine that
>   runs AV has to have a copy of AV purchased for it (or bundled with it).
>   While CBM has a player, it's not freely distributable, and the school
>   would have to buy a license to use it on the 500s.
    
    Say what?  My A500 is quite happy running the flows that came with
    AmigaVision.  I might believe that 1MB is required, but I don't buy the
    "more memory than CBM intended" line.  AmigaVision IS packaged with the
    A500P (1MB) systems offered under the educational discount.

> AmigaVision IS packaged with the
>    A500P (1MB) systems offered under the educational discount.

I thought this was discontinued - or do you mean it is continued
when you go the ed discount route?

I agree that the Amiga could be a perfect computer for schools, and I
wish Commodore had really pushed it a few years ago, before Apple
started saying that Macs are good in schools too. The Amiga, with color
sound, and a large monitor is inherently more appropriate for elementary
school children. The LC is still too expensive.

Unless C= comes up with a very cheap & seamless Apple II emulator for
A500s they don't have much of a chance in the US.  Apple gave away a lot
of IIs and software, and schools won't throw anything away until our
"Education President" or somebody starts spreading some education dough 
around...  very sad, indeed, that many schools are way behind in computer 
technology and training. 

I think the Amiga has made it into some high schools and art colleges for
use in computer art and animation courses.

Dave

    I'm curious what others think about elementary school kids and Amigas
    with hard drives. I'd assume that most schools would buy Amiga 500s 
    without hard drives. However, we're all too familiar with the pain 
    involved in using an Amiga with floppies only. 

    If schools do plan on adding hard drives to 500s or buy 2000HDs, I wonder 
    about the safety of the data on those drives, given the "rough" 
    environment they'll be in. It just seems there's a bigger chance in an
    elementary school setting of an Amiga being powered down during disk 
    activity and resulting in a corrupted file system. Granted, this is 
    possible with Macs and MS-DOS machines as well.

    Maybe this is a non-issue, as most educational software would probably
    be run from floppy anyway. Thoughts?

    -Dom

	Much of the educational software you see running on an Apple ][ GS
was written for Apple ][. Apple ][ software is comparable to C64 software.
There are TONS of educational programs for the C64 and there are C64 emulators
for the Amiga. So, all CBM would have to do is to sell a turnkey package to
hook up a C64 drive and emulate the C64. It just needs to be plug and play so
anyone can do it.

	That could get the machines in the classroom. Once that happened, more
native Amiga software would get written. Actually, given clip art to start with,
many of the applicatons I have seen could be cranked out using AMOS in a
couple of hours.

	I saw a demo of computers for preschool a while back. They had an
Apple ][ GS with an Echo IIB voice synth (terrible quality voice). The setup
they had cost $2500 and was vastly inferior to an A500P.

>	Much of the educational software you see running on an Apple ][ GS
>was written for Apple ][. Apple ][ software is comparable to C64 software.
>There are TONS of educational programs for the C64 and there are C64 emulators
>for the Amiga. So, all CBM would have to do is to sell a turnkey package to
>hook up a C64 drive and emulate the C64. It just needs to be plug and play so
>anyone can do it.

The only flaw with this is that Commodore would have to give away C64 software
equivilent to what the schools already have in Apple II software. Equivilent
or "comparable" is not the same as "I already bought this.", which is what the
schools will say. Then Apple will sell them an LC with am emulator card.
The school budget person can say "And we can still use all of our software"
instead of, "We have to throw out our old software". 

A regular business would do a cost analysis and maybe come to a different 
conclusion, planning for the future and all, but schools have a budget 
process that borders on the bizarre. And they NEVER throw things out until
the replacement is at their finger tips. In fact much of what they get is 
donated by businesses that would throw it out if it weren't for tax writeoffs.

So, C= could donate C64 software to replace the "perfectly good" software
the schools already have, or forget it.

Cynical Dave

    Say what?  My A500 is quite happy running the flows that came with
    AmigaVision.  I might believe that 1MB is required, but I don't buy the

Sorry; I guess I believed the sticker on the box that said "2MB required".
That may be for editing only.

Does anyone know if AV flows can be run on a 512K system?

If AV is packaged with the 1MB systems (I've been told that this was dropped),
that also solves the licensing problem.

	<mike

    Re .14:
    
> > Say what?  My A500 is quite happy running the flows that came with
> > AmigaVision.  I might believe that 1MB is required, but I don't buy the
>
>   Sorry; I guess I believed the sticker on the box that said "2MB
>   required". That may be for editing only.
>
>   Does anyone know if AV flows can be run on a 512K system?
    
    According to the book, the "minimum" configuration is 1MB of RAM.  The
    "recommended" configuration is 3MB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive.  I
    assume the larger amount is needed for the creation of flows.

>   If AV is packaged with the 1MB systems (I've been told that this was
>   dropped), that also solves the licensing problem.
    
    The current educational price list shows AmigaVison in the A500P package.

    Couple of points...  First, as another reply said, Commodore is an
    excellent source of information.  Call the 800 number and they will
    certainly get you in touch with the right people.
    
    _Amazing Computing_ for September or October ran a story on Amigas in a
    little school system in South Dakota.  My impression from the article,
    and from others like it, is that there is little specifically
    "educational" software available for Amiga, but on the other hand, the
    standard packages encourage kids to tremendous creativity.
    
    It's worth noting that the teacher in the Dakota article taught his
    kids how to use MS-DOS, Macintosh and Amiga operating systems.
    
    Last week I had a chance to see Apple IIs in action at a small school. 
    If I hadn't experienced it firsthand, I wouldn't have believed how
    crude this machine is by 1991 standards.  Ditto for software -- some is
    imaginative, but all of it is crude.
    
    It's my impression that the main reason people cling to the Apple II in
    schools is its installed base, i.e. people want to preserve their
    hardware and software investment.  I'd advocate a "heterogeneous
    environment," i.e. have two or three different kinds of computers in
    a school, to lessen this problem.
    
    Wes

    School systems...They teach the kids the basics of computing, teach
    them how to use the machines and the software using a lesson plan. 
    Next year there are new kids.  The same computer, same software and
    same lesson plan accomplishes the same results.  Minor changes are a
    way of life.  Major changes would be quite labor intensive and then
    would have the undesirable drawback of making it impossible to guage   
    the performance of the students.

>    Last week I had a chance to see Apple IIs in action at a small school. 
>    If I hadn't experienced it firsthand, I wouldn't have believed how
>    crude this machine is by 1991 standards.  Ditto for software -- some is
>    imaginative, but all of it is crude.
    
>    It's my impression that the main reason people cling to the Apple II in
>    schools is its installed base, i.e. people want to preserve their
>    hardware and software investment. 

My impressions exactly. The situation is very depressing if you care about
education, the future of techonology in the US etc. And this is the situation 
in "wealthy" school systems as well as poorer schools.

Misc. ramblings, ahead...

Meanwhile, in Europe teenagers are coding those amazing Amiga demos we feast 
our eyes on... Seen any of those run on an Apple II lately?
Teens who code those demos now will be coding the groundbreaking software
of the future. American students see Apple IIs, 9" screen B&W Macs and
low grade PCs that beep and have garish colors. Would you be inspired?

My 9 year old son keeps asking me why his friends have PCs or Macs when
our Amiga A500 is clearly superior. Sure, his frame of reference is games,
but the history of software development is tied to game development.
Students play with computers and learn useful skills at the same time.
Students [and teachers] who have only boring computers/software look 
elsewhere for excitement and the US relinquishes another area of technical
expertise.

Write your congress person   1/2 :^)

Dave

>Teens who code those demos now will be coding the groundbreaking software
>of the future.

	I think, adolescents who excell with computers often go on to become
	doctors, lawyers, phycisists, and game show hosts ($1M/year or more).
	People working in computers came late to technology, perhaps in college
	and later.
Tom

    Re .19:
    
� > Teens who code those demos now will be coding the groundbreaking
� > software of the future.
�
�   I think, adolescents who excell with computers often go on to become
�   doctors, lawyers, phycisists, and game show hosts ($1M/year or more).
�   People working in computers came late to technology, perhaps in college
�   and later.
    
    Back in the early 1960s, *I* was one of those teenagers and had access
    to what was then the state of the art (which falls FAR short of what my
    Amiga 500 provides at a tiny fraction of the price 8^).  Like many of
    my contemporaries, I went off to a well-regarded school of engineering
    and ended up in computers for life.
    
    Though I'd agree that MANY computer professionals started out in other
    fields of study, I'd also assert that MANY computer professionals were
    first exposed to computers in their teens and "caught the bug".  One
    piece of evidence that I offer is that the largest department (by a
    LOT) at M.I.T. is Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (and that
    "6-3", the C.S. major therein) is the larger half of that department).

    My fear is that we may be too close to our deadline to really
    consider the Amiga as a contender.  There are a LOT
    of barriers to getting technology into schools, and IBM (more
    than anyone) and Apple have done a lot of work to help bridge
    them.

    what is the 800 number that was mentioned?

    a lot of mention of price.....what would the price of a basic
    Amiga be, education discount, with a reasonable amount of memory
    and hard disk.  for a Mac LC, it seems that this is about 4 MB and
    40 Mb hard disk.  the new Mac OS (version 7.0) eats a lot of memory,
    and uses it freely for some of the new features like file sharing
    across their local (basically free) network.

    does Amiga have the equivalent of the 'localtalk' net, so all the
    machines in the school can share printers and, to some extent, files?
    the Mac has this builtin (at its inflated price?).  the LC has sound
    in and out, but from what I hear, doesnt do voice as well as the Amiga.

    Does Commodore have their own line of printers?  Postscript?  How about
    using Dec printers?

    We started with an administration committed to DOC machines...and we've
    turned them around at least as far as Macs.  Not sure how much further
    they can go
    thanks
    bob

    Re .21:
    
>   My fear is that we may be too close to our deadline to really
>   consider the Amiga as a contender.  There are a LOT
>   of barriers to getting technology into schools, and IBM (more
>   than anyone) and Apple have done a lot of work to help bridge
>   them.

    IBM is bigger than everyone else and is literally EVERYWHERE.
    (Caustic comment deleted. 8^)
    
>   a lot of mention of price.....what would the price of a basic
>   Amiga be, education discount, with a reasonable amount of memory
>   and hard disk.  for a Mac LC, it seems that this is about 4 MB and
>   40 Mb hard disk.  the new Mac OS (version 7.0) eats a lot of memory,
>   and uses it freely for some of the new features like file sharing
>   across their local (basically free) network.

    I have the INDIVIDUAL educational price list at home.  The prices given
    to schools are lower still.  Go to the Memory Location in Wellesley and
    ask the owner, Don Towne, for the right list.
    
    IMHO, you'd probably want to buy an A2000HD per elementary or junior
    high school (two to three A3000 or A2500 file server systems would seem
    appropriate at the high school level) and surround it with A500P (1MB)
    systems.  Get a price on DoubleTalk (below) in lieu of hard disks on
    the A500s and put a second hard drive (200MB or so) into each server
    system.  I'd guess you'd be in the neighborhood of $2K per server ($3K
    at the high school level) + $1K per A500, including DoubleTalk on all
    nodes.
    
>   does Amiga have the equivalent of the 'localtalk' net, so all the
>   machines in the school can share printers and, to some extent, files?
>   the Mac has this builtin (at its inflated price?).  the LC has sound
>   in and out, but from what I hear, doesnt do voice as well as the Amiga.
    
    "DoubleTalk" provides full AppleTalk support to Amigas at about $400
    per system (you should be able to get educational/quantity discounts). 
    In an Amiga-only network, it runs at twice the AppleTalk speed.  It's
    QUITE happy to operate in a mixed-system environment, which is what
    makes sense anyway.

>   Does Commodore have their own line of printers?  Postscript?  How about
>   using Dec printers?
    
    Commodore lists both a dot-matrix printer and an ink-jet printer on its
    educational price list.  You can connect a WIDE variety of printers to
    the Amiga (the most popular printers usually emulate the Epson-X or
    Epson-Q series -- there are AmigaDOS printer drivers for many more), so
    don't feel bound to the ones sold by Commodore.  Better word processing
    and DTP packages ALL support PostScript output (either to an attached
    printer or disk file).  If you "publish" a PostScript printer to the
    DoubleTalk network, sending output to it should be simple.
          

    Re: the 800 number

    Way back in note 3084.1 (Nov 89) I posted an 800 number for the Commodore
    educational program: 1-800-627-9595 x 500. Not sure whether it's still
    valid. The more recent 800 number that sticks in my mind is
    1-800-66-AMIGA. Non toll-free numbers for Commodore are: 215-431-9100
    and 215-436-4200.

    -Dom

    re: .21
    
    Memory requirements: 1 megabyte of memory is fine except for
    graphics-intensive applications, in which case you would want more.
    
    Printers:  AmigaDOS supports many popular printers from the operating
    system, including their graphics features.  You will NOT be locked in
    to any particular brand and you will NOT need printer drivers with
    every application.  OS support for printers is one of the nicer
    features of Amiga.
    
    Hard drives:  I won't argue with a previous reply suggesting file
    servers and networking via DoubleTalk.  (BTW, a nit, Appletalk is a
    protocol, Localtalk is the "free" medium, 250 KB/sec or so over twisted
    pair wiring.)  However, let me point out that a perfectly workable set
    of "system" software fits on one disk, and an Amiga with two floppy
    drives allows you to accomplish quite a lot.
    
    Wes

    re: .22
    
    Bill, could you please post some of the a2000 individual educational
    prices from the price list you mentioned? I have a friend who teaches
    adult education classes who is interested in a 2000 (and various
    options) who hope he might qualify for the educational discount.
    
    Thanks,
    Frank

    [I hadn't planned on posting these, but what the heck?  Rumor has it
    that there will be some price reductions this fall that could make the
    current "Educational Individual Price" look anemic.  The list omits a
    few things (e.g. printers and genlocks) that weren't of interest to my
    son when he placed his order a couple of weeks ago.]
    
    Here are some items from the "Educational Individual Price Schedule"
    (effective August 1, 1991):
    
    ORDER #	PRICE	DESCRIPTION

    Amiga 2000		Except as noted, all systems include:
    			7MHz M68000 CPU, "Fatter" (1MB) Agnus, 3.5" Floppy, 
    			1MB RAM, Mouse, Keyboard, 2 Mouse Ports, Serial & 
    			Parallel Ports, AmigaDOS 1.3 & AmigaVision

    A2000C	$1164	Amiga 2000

    A2000HD/1	 1455	Amiga 2000HD
    			As above, plus 50MB Hard Drive

    A2000HD/P	 1455	Amiga 2000HD Professional
    			As above, plus 50MB Hard Drive with the
    			following pre-installed software:
    			    Advantage, Transwrite, Pagesetter II, Goldfile,
    			    Paint 2000, Music 2000, Mediashow, CrossDOS
    			Instructional Video included.

    A2500/50	 2687	Amiga 2500/50
    			As above, plus 5MB RAM & 50MB Hard Drive
    			16MHz M68020 CPU expansion with M68881 FPU

    A2500/100	 2911	Amiga 2500/100
    			As above, plus 5MB RAM & 100MB Hard Drive
    			16MHz M68020 CPU expansion with M68881 FPU


    Amiga 3000		Except as noted, all systems include:
    			25MHz M68030 CPU, M68882 FPU, Extended Chip Set
    			featuring "Super" (2MB) Agnus, 3.5" Floppy Drive,
    			2MB (32-bit) RAM, Mouse, Keyboard, 2 Mouse Ports, 
    			Serial & Parallel Ports, SCSI Disk Controller,
    			sockets for 2MB CHIP RAM & 16MB of 32-bit Fast RAM
    			15.75 & 31.5KHz Video Ports, video deinterlacer,
    			AmigaDOS 1.3 & 2.0, AmigaVision.

    A3000-16/50	 2183	As above, with 50MB hard drive and M68881 FPU.
    			16MHz clock is NOT upgradable to 25MHz.

    A3000-25/50	 2547	As above, with 50MB hard drive.

    A3000-25/100 3018	As above, with 5MB RAM and 100MB hard drive.
    			
    A3000UXB	 3639	As above, with 5MB RAM, 100MB hard drive, EtherNet
    			adapter, UNIX System V Release 4, OpenLook GUI.

    A3000UXD	 4658	As above, with 9MB RAM, 200MB hard drive, EtherNet
    			adapter, UNIX System V Release 4, OpenLook GUI.

    A3000UXG	 5095	As above, with 9MB RAM, 200MB hard drive, EtherNet
    			adapter, A2410 Lowell Card (24-bit high-res),
    			UNIX System V Release 4, OpenLook GUI.


    Accessories		For all A2000/A3000 models, except as noted.

    1084S	$ 282	RGBA/RGBI/Composite Monitor with stereo audio.

    1930	  415	VGA Color Monitor (RGBA at 31.5KHz only).

    1950	  520	Multisync (15-36KHz) RGBA Monitor.

    A2024	  542	Hi-Res (up to 1008x800 pixels) Monochrome Monitor.

    A10		   28	Stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers.

    A2320	  212	Display enhancer board, de-interlaces & scan-doubles
    			standard display for output to VGA or Multisync
    			monitors.  (A2000 only)

    A2410	  727	Lowell Card, uses TI TMS34010 graphics co-processor
    			to provide 256 out of 16M colors at resolutions up
    			to 1024x1024 pixels.  (A3000 & UNIX only)

    A2058	  258	2MB (16-bit) RAM Expansion board, expandable to 8MB.

    A2010	   90	3.5" internal floppy drive for A2000.

    A3010	   90	3.5" internal floppy drive for A3000.

    A2091	  147	SCSI Hard Drive Controller with sockets for 2MB of
    			16-bit Fast RAM.

    A2091-50	  553	A2091 with pre-formatted 50MB hard drive mounted.

    A2060	  168	ArcNet Adapter.

    A2065	  241	EtherNet Adapter.

    AS225	  140	TCP/IP - NFS Network Software allowing access to
    			to TCP/IP Networks and NFS Storage Systems.

    A2088D	  336	BridgeBoard-XT:  Intel 8088 with 5.25" 360KB floppy
    			diskette drive and MS-DOS 3.30

    A2286	  549	BridgeBoard-AT:  Intel 80286 with 5.25" 360KB floppy
    			diskette drive and MS-DOS 3.30

    A2630/4	 1329	M68030 CPU expansion board at 25MHz includes MMU,
    			M68882 FPU, and 4MB of 32-bit RAM.

    AS2232	  282	Multi-serial port adapter supports 7 additional
    			RS232 serial ports.


    Comments:  [These are MY OWN opinions, not those of Commodore-Amiga.]

    1.	The standard A2000 (7MHz 68000) runs at about 1 mips (same as a
    	Macintosh Classic, but without squandering CPU on screen display).
    2.	The A2500 (16MHz 68020) runs at about 2 mips (comparable to the
    	original and low-end Macintosh II systems).
    3.	The faster A3000 (25MHz 68030) is about 6 mips (comparable to the
    	high-end Macintosh II systems).
    4.	MIPS don't mean much.  Most people (especially -386 and -486 users)
    	have more CPU power than they really need.  Most systems are limited
    	by their I/O throughput, including disk device limitations.
    5.	Some programs (especially software that breaks the rules and
    	bypasses standard AmigaDOS calls to play with the hardware) have
    	trouble on the A3000 and/or AmigaDOS 2.0.
    6.	Some older games ONLY work properly on the basic 68000 (which the
    	A3000 omits).  New stuff seems to work on all models.
    7.	If you're even CONSIDERING the A2320 display enhancer, start out
    	with a multi-sync (1950) monitor so you won't have to switch later.
    8.	Display enhancers AREN'T perfect.  Rapid motion can cause "tearing"
    	of objects.  For games and such, a multi-sync monitor with an A-B
    	switch (between the standard 15.75KHz and de-interlaced 31.5KHz)
    	outputs would make sense.

    Thanks much Bill for the info!
    
    Frank

>   A2500/50	 2687	Amiga 2500/50
>    			As above, plus 5MB RAM & 50MB Hard Drive
>    			16MHz M68020 CPU expansion with M68881 FPU

>   A2500/100	 2911	Amiga 2500/100
>    			As above, plus 5MB RAM & 100MB Hard Drive
>    			16MHz M68020 CPU expansion with M68881 FPU

Shouldn't these be 25MHZ 68030's? Commodore has not sold the 020 for a
while.

	-SES

    Re .28:
    
> > A2500/50	 2687	Amiga 2500/50
> >  			As above, plus 5MB RAM & 50MB Hard Drive
> >  			16MHz M68020 CPU expansion with M68881 FPU

> > A2500/100	 2911	Amiga 2500/100
> >  			As above, plus 5MB RAM & 100MB Hard Drive
> >  			16MHz M68020 CPU expansion with M68881 FPU

>   Shouldn't these be 25MHZ 68030's?  Commodore has not sold the 020 for a
>   while.
    
    Oops!  You're right, of course.  That's what I get for trying to fill
    in the gaps (the price sheet didn't explain what the A2500 was).