A User's Story  by Carl Smith  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? I bought my Amiga 1000 in 1986. It had 0.5Mb (512Kb) of RAM, Monitor and external floppy drive and cost over $3,000.00. Also at that time the 3.5" disks themselves cost $10.00 each ($100.00 a box of 10). I mentioned this cost to someone recently and was effectively told to go jump in the lake as they didn't beleive it. We still have the A1000 although it has changed somewhat. Most changes were influenced by articles and letters in Megadisc. It has a Phoenix Motherboard with 1Mb of CHIP and 1Mb of fast RAM, Kickstart 1.3 and 2.0, SCSI interface, an additional floppy drive and a Proton 1Mb memory expansion. For myself, I prefer the Amiga over its rivals (IBM compatible and MacIntosh) after experience in using all three. They each have strengths and weaknesses and I am not going to be embroiled in a "ours is better'n yours" debate. I do know the fustration of trying to get a IBM Compatible to accept different configurations without falling apart and the problems with trying to get DOS applications to run in the 640Kb conventional memory. A classic example is Microsoft Works (an integrated Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database and Communications package). The Word Processor is OK, however when it comes to Spreadsheets and Databases it is a different story. With these 2 facilities there are severe limits to the amount of data that can be stored and operated on even with up to 5Mb of RAM without messing around with memory drivers and the autoexec.bat and Config.sys files. Windows helps a bit but I find it slow and unwieldy. The Macintosh is a bit better but (at least under System 6 the last time I have used the Macintosh) lacks the multi-tasking capabilities of the Amiga. I found this out the hard way while working on it. I had been using MacPaint and was saving the work to the floppy as the machine was not in my area. The machine said the floppy was full so I thought "no sweat I'll just get to the desktop and delete some files from the floppy". Little did I know. I had two choices: one - close Macpaint and lose my work or two - save my work to the hard disk then close Macpaint. I took option two. I then had to go out to the desktop and do the relevant disk house keeping. If I had been using the Amiga I could have sent the current screen to the back so that I was in Workbench (Desktop) done the house keeping then bring the application to the front and finally save my work. The Amiga is not perfect by any means and I feel Commodore should receive several swift kicks to the backside for not improving the architecture before now. I have followed the Amiga from being a new kid on the block with the most advanced features of any platform. How many machines had the multi-tasking, graphics and sound capabilities that the Amiga brought to the scene and for a price many would have killed for. I have seen it go from a leader to an also ran with the IBM brigade and Macintosh camp both boasting 24 bit colour, multi-tasking operating systems (requiring bulk megabytes of RAM and hard drive space to run even without applications) and lowering prices. I can only hope that Commodore have received a big enough scare so that they will no longer rest on their laurels and will actively develop and market what I still believe is a terrific machine. I have been reading with interest the moans and whinges that have been plagueing the Amiga magazines, concerning changes to specifications and the fact that the new machines are different to, and less compatible with the previous generations of the architecture, and the debate over the introduction of the A600 then shortly afterwards the A1200. I agree Commodore deserves a blast over the debacle. They probably should have released the A600 and A1200 at the same time so that purchasers could have made an informed choice ie whether to choose the cheaper A600 with the previous generation of chips or go the more expensive A1200 route with the more advanced architecture.  Some further thoughts We ordered a 170 Mb hard drive through your mail order catalogue. This is to thank you for your VERY prompt attention. We ordered the mounting kit from Phoenix Microtechnologies in Adelaide on the same day as we sent off the cheque for the hard drive (5 July 1993). The mounting kit arrived on Wednesday 7 July and the hard drive on Friday 9 July. After much trouble (lack of specialised tools) the hard drive was installed and operating by Sunday Afternoon 11 July. It would have been installed earlier (maybe) except we were out on Saturday. I can tell you the shielding in the A1000 is a real toughy. It took about 4 hours of drilling and sawing to have the hole the drive is meant to sit in. We have set the hard drive up with 3 partitions (System, Utils and Games) and so far have hardly made a dent in its capacity. The second largest task was the formatting of each partition. We are also using a facility called "Tools Daemon" that allows the selection of programs from a menu bar on the workbench screen under WB2. It is really useful as we no longer need to navigate through numerous windows to locate the icon for the program we wish to run. It is hard to realise we have had the drive for little over a week. It is just so easy to get used to. Further to my previous letter, I tried out a Macintosh Classic that had 4 Mb Ram, a 40Mb hard drive and a 16 Mhz 68030 processor. It seemed to run much slower than my trusty 7.14 Mhz 68000 A1000. It was a basic indictment of the efficiency of the Amiga's custom chips.  Niggle There is one small niggle about your service and it relates to your couriers. The courier that Phoenix used to deliver the mounting kit left a card at the house to say that we could pick up a package at the Canberra Airport on the Wednesday evening. However my wife, Ginny, arrived home at about 4:00 pm on Friday to find the box containing the hard drive just left on the front door step. It was a bit of a shock as the hard drive was worth $600.00 and the mounting kit $55.00. Well I suppose you can't please everyone all the time. As a parting comment, I would like to say that we will be continuing our support of Megadisc. It is a great source of information and if the hardware and service is anything to go by then may you prosper. I have no reservations in commending you to anyone who deals with you.  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿?