STAAB
PHOTO: BRITTAIN
ERE
HACKIN OFF
Things are changing as the market gets more
sophisticated and educated IBM. the gigantic
rip-off of a company that has been soaking the
business and private sectors for years, is start-
ing to get bad press and sideways looks as
smaller companies expand and came out with
better products for a fraction of the cost. Putting
a new computer on the market today can be a
sketchy prospect, since software developers are
usually cautious about investing a lot of time into
something that may never have a chance, and
software availability is one of the most important
factors in keeping alive. People looking for
cheaper alternatives to expensive standards are
beginning to find some good options at more
than reasonable prices. These new machines
pose no immediate threat to IBM, due to the in-
credible sheep-nature of most consumers, but
it's only a matter of time before software is availa-
ble for the $2,000 unit that will put the $8,000
IBM to shame...
A new machine that's been selling well, espe-
cially in Europe, is the Atari 1040ST. A low price
(half the cost of a comparable competitor), flaxi
ble, powerful hardware, good graphics and one
of the fastest operating speeds of any micro
computer, make the ST one of the best deals on
the market The price with a color monitor and
ane megabyte of RAM is $1199. (The IBM PC/AT
with one megabyte of RAM and color EGA costs
at least $7,000 and you need to buy the GEM
operating system to duplicate the Atari's win-
dows and pull-down menus.) Like its relative the
520ST, the main processor of the 1040 is the
68000 running at 8MHZ. Because it is new and
not much software has been developed, it'll be
awhile before any serious business applications
can be considered with it. Some of the software
thats been developed, however, shows how
flexible a machine it really is.
The Commodore Amiga is another very impres
sive machine. The Amiga A2000 has had a slow
start because of its late introduction, but sales
seem to be picking up. This computer has excel-
lent graphics and sound, but runs a bit slow. For
$1800 (with color) the Amiga uses the same
68000 as the Atari 1040 ST but the similarity
ends there The Amiga has five special custom
chips which do most of the dirty work involved in
keeping the system running, allowing the main
processor to concentrate only on the tasks you
assign to it. This feature is unavailable in most
other micros, where the main processor is usu-
ally occupied with painting the screen, making
sounds, listening to the keyboard, and even con-
volling the disk drives.
While cument computer technology finds
ways to speed things up and allow you to ac-
complish more in less time, unless you have
multi-tasking you will always end up waiting for
your computer to finish one job before it goes on
to the next. With the Atari ST you might be able
to add multi-tasking at a later point, and al-
though an IBM PC can sometimes be fooled into
multi-tasking, all functions are slowed considera-
bly. Plus, not all software is designed to allow
this which can cause your whole system to seize
up. Since the Amiga hás multi-tasking bunto
its architecture, all software woten for it will per
form as such. This capability makes it possible to
play a video game, receive a fe through the
modem, generate graphics and sort a database,
all while waiting for your term paper to finish
printing. Large computers (mainframes) and
most mini-computers have multi-tasking built in,
but these machines cost $500.c00 and beyond.
THRASHER BBS operates at 300 and 1200
baud, between 4:30 pm and 9:00 am. wook-
days and 24 hours a day on weekends. Call 322.
5630 or send mail through a Fidonet system in
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