HOLDING ITS OWN
Are you an 8-bit user feeling a little dispirited
by all the publicity that the ST is getting? Well, let me give you a
few words of comfort.
It is true that the ST can do many powerful things
that are outside the scope of any 8-bit machine but there are also
many applications where the good old Atari can hold its own. Take
word processing. I fully intended to transfer the make up of PAGE 6
to the ST but at present, out of the dozen or so word processors available,
there are none that are a significant improvement over Superscript
or PaperClip to warrant changing. Indeed the majority of those
available are significantly inferior and the remainder all seem to
have their own peculiar formats making each incompatible with
anything else. So, for the foreseeable future PAGE 6 will continue
to be produced on a 130XE using Superscript (I am too used to it to
change, despite my comments on PaperClip) and any 8-bit owners can
continue to feel proud that they have a machine that can still hold
its own in many circumstances.
An editorial in another magazine recently bemoaned
the fact that although tens of thousands of ST's have been sold
finding those owners and gathering all-round concerted support of
the machine was, strangely, very difficult. Don't tell us, we have
lived with this problem for three years! The fact is, as all readers
will know, that Atari has never had widespread popular support from
the trade in this country and possibly never will. In hundreds of
towns and cities up and down the country you can walk into a
computer shop and find software for half a dozen machines (even
extinct ones) and nothing for Atari. That's a fact of life, and
despite the eternal optimistic comments from Atari, it is a
situation that is not likely to change dramatically because without
widespread outlets software companies will not produce the software
and without the software there will be no widespread outlets. What
happens is that you get (hundreds of) thousands of Atari owners who
do little with their machines and seldom make contact with others.
That is the situation so what can be done? Well
Atari themselves are the only people capable of redressing the
situation and they could do it quite simply. One problem with the
way Atari operate is that by farming out warranty repairs to
retailers and distributors they do not have any sort of record of
who buys the machines and consequently, unlike with other
manufacturers, they have a huge user base which they cannot
identify. Fair enough if they want others to do repairs but if they
simply put a card in each box inviting purchasers to complete and
return it to receive information about their machine in the future,
they could build up a mailing list of virtually all the users of
their machines. This mailing list could then be rented out to
interested parties who provide support for Atari machines (can I be
first in the queue please!) and the whole Atari market could receive
a much needed boost. Software producers would be able to reach a
much wider market, magazines would be able to obtain more readers
and retailers would be encouraged to stock Atari titles as more
became available. Pipe dreams? I don't think so. And what's more, by
renting out the mailing list, Atari could maintain records of all
their customers without it costing them a penny.
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