4]-------------- 3]READERS' FORUM 4]-------------- (JUMPDISK NOTE: We welcome your comments on the Amiga field in general. We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and conciseness.) 3]COMMODORE MOVING - OUTLAWED COPIERS - Gary Derus, Menasha, WI Commodore seems to be finally moving, thanks to their customer satisfaction people. My A590 has been in the shop waiting for parts for six months! The A590 and its parts are in short supply, but in light of my long wait and owning a Commodore Colt and two Amigas, they are trying to find a working A590 to swap for mine. X-Copy is now available in the U.S. It includes nibble mode and a few extras. A brief lesson on writing one's own parameters is given in such a way that a moderately knowledgeable user can do it. The big drawback is that all updates must be made by sending the disk back to Germany with U.S. currency for an update. A reasonably priced $15 hardware add-on can also be had by sending away, again to Germany. I have learned that in England a law was passed, forbidding discussion of anything pertaining to breaking protected software, and that in Germany they have outlawed software backups altogether. There goes my update. FROM EDITOR: You should have no problem receiving the update. U.S. law does not prohibit backups or marketing of such programs. We received our latest X-Copy update and the dongle from the publisher, who had a booth at AmiEXPO Washington. The new laws you mention appear as an abreaction to a rather loose interpretation of copyright laws as we know them. There remain, especially on the continent of Europe, teen-aged males with group names faintly reminiscent of terrorists, who delight in cracking code and distributing it. The psychological set of these youngsters is simple: They haven't matured and they lack power in an adult world. They derive imagined power from the puerile tantrums of destroying what others have created. They portray themselves as political anarchists in a pitiful effort to dignify what they do. Many are quite talented and in years to come will join the ranks of programmers who create material which they hope will not be stolen. They will grow up. They will have teen-agers. Their children will pay them back for what they did to their elders. 3]KEEP THE NEWS - DOS LAB - INTERFACE - Stephen T. Harboy, Water Mill, NY Regarding the subscriber who wanted JUMPDISK to scrap all text in favor of 100 percent program content, I strenuously dissent. Your commentaries, reviews, tutorials, show and industry reports are by far the best parts of JUMPDISK. Few of your programs are of lasting interest to me. Your DOS LAB was a godsend. It provided a user-friendly, hands-on, logical, thorough and concise course that was easily absorbed. I would have given up on the CLI and Shell otherwise. One minor complaint about the Articles Menu. I much prefer the October 1989 setup which had all articles and programs in windows laid out in neat rows. Your present setup is confusing, with a scrolling menu that duplicates a screen congested with icons. With the old system one could systematically go through all the files and know that nothing was missed. One last thought: The one-stop PD shopping service is a great convenience. FROM EDITOR: We've gone back and forth on the Article Menu. In truth, many users prefer it because it presents most of the contents in a single list. The only material currently without icons is generally the content of the TEXT drawer. Otherwise, we give icons to documentation text and put it in drawers with allied programs. We've considered adding icons for text files. The tradeoff involves something many users don't know. Whenever you create a new file, two sectors of disk memory are used. That 1024 bytes to hold every new icon used. So far, we've opted for saving disk space. 3]VIEW FROM EUROPE - Thomas Jones, APO New York In a two-page ComputerWorld magazine advertisement was the announcement that Apple has just built a Macintosh that "is the first personal computer with TWO additional processors" and also "the first personal computer to use a 68030 processor running at 40 Mhz. I immediately fired off a letter, letting the editors know my A2000 already has more than two co-processors, as well as a (GVP3001) 68030 capable of running at 50 Mhz, and that the new A3000 can definitely match Mac's two co-processors and call with its six co-processors. Besides being fun, it serves a useful function for Commodore customers to point out to the commercial world's editors that not all their readers are wearing big blue-tinted glasses and eating an apple a day. Whenever you see such biased claims, tell the magazine you know better. At least they can't say they didn't know. It doesn't hurt to remind them that when the Radio Shack TRS-80 was being touted as the "business machine," Apple was a little known but very advanced PC with a loyal following much like Amiga is today. Writing letters can change things. The AmiExpo in Basel Switzerland convinced many people in the European Common Market that Commodore is a serious company, judging by some of the German computer user magazines. The A3000 was of course the star of the show, with a perpetual crowd six deep around the CBM stand the whole Saturday I was there. I hope to see LANs and Transputers demonstrated at the Cologne AMIEXPO in November. The AAFES (Army Air Force Exchange Service) is now carrying the Amiga 2000 and 500, as well as Commodore peripherals and the Commodore PC line, both in their stores around the world and also in the AAFES catalog. This is a chain the size of Sears, though available only to the military. Whether by coincidence or not, Apple decided to withdraw its product line at roughly the same time. The European edition of Stars and Stripes had earlier stated the Amiga was going to be carried on a trial basis in the AAFES stores in response to popular requests. The software shelves in my local store is refilled regularly now -- not always with what I want, but that is another matter. One of the most welcome pieces of news about the A3000 and all machines which run the Expanded Chip Set (soon) was that Workbench 2.0 can select either PAL or NTSC modes. This opens much software otherwise usable on either PAL or NTSC machines, but not both. 3]YOU COULD BE PERFECT IF . . . - Angelo Furlan, Downsview, ON Canada Your "magazine" has to be the most consistently interesting and useful Amiga publication on the market today. If you could squeeze in a few high-quality sound/instrument samples on each JUMPDISK, you'd be perfect! FROM EDITOR: Oh my, sound files are so big! There's not much in this issue, though in the July issue you probably found several interesting sampled sounds and music. We'll try. 3]AMIEXPO WASHINGTON - Richard J. Fetzner, Stafford, VA The Washington, D.C., AmiEXPO was my first computer show. I found the show mildly disappointing. I had visualized something larger. The fact that my wheelchair and I had to ride the freight elevator to the show floor was not the best way to start . . . Being an A1000 owner, I do not get too enthused by some of the very good equipment that will not work on my A1000. It was a pleasant surprise to find that if I try to be compatible with the new A3000, I have a choice. Both the Rejuvenator and the DVS-Wonder expansion boards proved to be very interesting. Also, MAST's announced but still under wraps Infinity Machine. If any of the three had been available at the show, I would have probably bought it on the spot. Now, however, I think I'll just wait and see what develops in the market. FROM EDITOR: The Washington EXPO did have some interesting products. Regarding MAST's Infinity Machine, it is still not available, so far as we know. See this issue's AmiEXPO Midwest report on latest developments. 3]FAVORITE SOFTWARE AUTHORS - Ben Smith, Denver, CO Charles Vassallo - Robert Wade - J. E. Charlsen. These are my favorite software authors which JUMPDISK has under contract. Can you get these fellows to put out more work? FROM EDITOR: No one is under contract to JUMPDISK, though we're always happy when these three authors (and several others) favor us with a submission. Vassallo, who is French, is currently at work on a book and may not return to JUMPDISK for two or three months. Charlsen was most recently represented by four programs in the May 1990 issue. We hear from him when we hear from him. Wade, who has made a splash with his geographic and anatomical tutorial programs, has been quite busy in his work with the U.S. Air Force, keeps in touch via postcards from the many places he goes on temporary duty. His work returns with a program about Southeast Asia in the September issue, and he is at work on a program dealing with body parts. That has no gory implications; it will presumably be another anatomical tutorial. 3]ANOTHER YEAR - Tom Cowan, San Diego, CA OK, congratulations on publishing your fourth-anniversary issue in July 1990. Forty-eight consecutive monthly issues is somewhat remarkable, given the failures of other publications, some of which had the resources of major funding behind them. However, it's said 90 percent of all small business fail within five years. You have 12 issues to go, if you're really going to prove yourself. FROM EDITOR: Ulp! We'll be counting the months. 3]THE AMIGA'S FUTURE: REMEMBER THE DEALERS - Lane Justice (JUMPDISK NOTE: "Lane Justice" is a pseudonym. We normally don't publish letters from authors who don't want their true identities known. However, since no claims are made and the topic forms an opinion from a sector not often given voice, we'll do it this time.) Upon my recent visit to AmiExpo Chicago, I listened to Bob Ryan of Byte Magazine give a thoughtful presentation on possible directions the Amiga might take in the next few years. I have a little different perspective because I work for my local dealer as a member of the sales staff for a major part of my income. I have owned one or more Amigas since 1985. During the years 1985 and 1986, the Amiga wasn't a profitable computer and lacked necessary hardware and software support. It wasn't until the relaunch in 1987 that things began happening. The Amiga industry saw a quantum leap, as the Amiga became a family of machines. This was the time in which many traded up to an Amiga from earlier machines. The Amiga also became identified with the Commodore name. This solved some problems but created others. In some places they still don't know C= produces anything but the 64 computer. Still, during this time, marketing efforts weren't correctly aimed and the user community really made the push that got the Amiga sales past the half-million market. A slogan about Commodore became very popular at that time: "Ready, Shoot, Aim." Disparagingly, the Amiga community looked on, hoping things would change. When Max Toy came aboard (as president), we began a secondary growth period. This one was longer, but it came with internal change. Commodore started changing from the inside out. However those changes weren't fast enough, so things began to slow. Dealer training seminars were held at the time, but they didn't allow for maximum effectiveness. Also, the dealer base had more of a problem than Commodore realized. Most of the people selling its computer used to sell C64s in mass-marketing style. This meant selling one or two machines at a time. Most dealers didn't have the experience or training to handle large quantity sales, nor to give the necessary support to the customers they had, let alone handle new customers in vertical markets such as publishing and video. Because of the impetus of video-based programs and the single focus on video (later to be called multi-media) that market flourished under the adversity of non-support. Since the new team headed by Harold Copperman was brought in, Commodore has been able to identify this problem and find solutions or work-arounds to the problem. For example, Commodore for the most part handles most of the brunt of education sales itself. The market should be more profitable, but that means a lot of work is necessary by people who are selling the machine to make it successful. Much education may be necessary to upgrade the skills of the current dealer base. The machine we have is upscale. Current and future clientele expect more for their money, in both service and support. I don't think the new "Commodore Team" is happy about the quality of the current dealer base. However, it has no choice in the matter yet. To survive it is totally reliant on the current sales force to spur on the market and to keep Commodore viable. While Commodore finds ways of upgrading itself and adding to roster of good dealers. Commodore is actively pursuing the opening of new dealerships, but most of these are established chains, like a ComputerLand or Businessland. These are staffed by people who know how to sell and support large quantities of machine sales. This is good for Commodore and good for the Amiga. It will open new necessary markets. Dealers, I am not saying you are down for the count with Commodore. After all, you did manage to sell a million machines in record time, in a non-mass market situation (unlike the 64's success). Commodore should take into consideration. They don't have a choice yet. Upgrade your capabilities before they do. I can't help but see the writing on the wall, from everything Commodore has and hasn't said. If you think about this from a business viewpoint and not emotionally (as a threat), it makes sense. However, too many dealers I have talked to don't see the warning signs. You just can't sell the Amiga like a C64, unless it's an A500 you are selling to that market. An Amiga 3000 running Unix requires, and that market will demand, a greater level of support than most of the dealer base is prepared to give. It will be interesting to see how Commodore handles this issue. I think Commodore believes it can turn around it's existing dealers, while adding high-quality dealers at the same time. I sincerely hope both things here are done aggressively. If so, it can mean long-term success. If not, they better quickly change course. If the early returns mean anything, I think they are getting successful at both. They are finally starting to drive the market again, instead of leaving it on auto-pilot with third parties and other support organizations. I hope they don't forget those organizations in the process of the revitalization. That could produce bad feelings spell ultimate disaster. Competing companies have fallen by the wayside for just that reason. 4]END OF TEXT