ASK AUNT AMIGA
 I was cruising the channels Friday 
night and flipped by Computer 
Chronicles. It's a show I usually 
pause at and sneer "Get An Amiga" 
because all I've seen are MS-dossy 
types and Macaddicts when I heard 
the magic word AMIGA.

Since Husband works while the 
world plays I keep the VCR ready 
to tape things to share with him 
when he comes home. There was 
an interview with a person saying how the Amiga was great because the price was low, it was so easy for the employees to be trained with it and he was able to pull and inexpensive software right off the shelf to use. I sat cheering this man's fore-sight and intelligence, then I heard the kicker - John Vernon was training officer for Hewlett-Packard, the computer people, and of all the computers in the world and all the computers his own company made when he needed a computer he went out and got the Amiga.

Yeah!

The show got better and better, Lou Wallace from Amiga World Magazine and Hedley Davis from Commodore demonstrated Amiga Vision wowing host Tim Bajarin. Lou kept saying "no, just a couple of evenings." as he put together an whole graphics show with simple icon clicks.

Then New Tek's Tim Jenison and Paul Montgomery showed Video Toaster. It's elephantine gestation was worth it. Sixteen-million colors with 35 nanosecond resolution is pretty impressive. They showed computer graphics real-time video, sounds, and animation all chugging along together from one little board for a paltry $1599. I state paltry because Stewart Cheifet who has purchased tv equipment and products was amazed by character generation which they said they paid $1500 a second for.

They were amazed - they were astounded. They seemed if not converted, convinced.

Cheifet called Disney "The animation people" Sam Palahnuk from Disney demonstrated the new software "Disney Animation" The program specials include clip-art and a tutorial to show you how Disney does it, and a special animation done by a Disney animator with the software.

Also included was a visit to FAUG. The First Amiga Users Group is in Palo Alto California. William Paicius said some meetings had 1000 members. He explained that user groups were more important for Amiga folks because we are mostly our own, figuring things out for ourselves.

So there was super program another jewel in our crown of information, more people paying attention to us, but as I told Husband the day people say IBM who? will be like completing the remodeling on our 1924 house - all the fun will be over. Husband says the men in the white coats won't let me take my Amiga to "the home".

Aunt Amiga is Dorothy Hall

PHILOSOPHERS STONE
by Roger Bacon

THE EMPERORS NEW CLOTHES

Why does plugging in or unplugging something have the potential to damage ones computer if it happens to be on at the time? Because it can cause anything from static discharges to spurious signals that might crash it or worse. If thats the case and given peoples habit of doing it anyway, then why dont manufacturers design their machines with this in mind?

Kids do plug and unplug joysticks with gay abandon and ditch disks in mid-read or, worse, mid-write so why not accept it and give the consumer some idiot proofing to compensate? Why do I sometimes feel like I'm the only one to whom that is a reasonable question.

When I had my own motorcycle repair business, I used to check chain tension, steering head bearing play and tire pressures as a matter of course and courtesy, whether the customer had put the bike in for a tune-up or a rebuild. If it was a bike I had up for sale or for an inexperienced rider, I would usually check spoke tension, rim truth, swing arm bearings and front/rear vertical alignment as well. Why? Because most accidents caused through evil handling were a result of shortcomings in those areas and a bike that had been crashed almost always had alignment problems. It didnt take long, it wasnt very complicated and I had peace of mind as a result.

People WILL smoke, drink and use their keyboards in dust filled fluff rich, static laden environments so why not use some kind of seal to ensure that the crud stays out? Why not seal the computer so that its fan provides positive pressurisation and the disk slots are the exit path of the nice clean filtered air, thereby keeping the other contaminants out?

If you really want to see a disaster in the making let a bunch of computer illiterate kids loose on a Mac and watch what happens when they switch it off and on to reset it like their C-64'stable by simply plugging something in, have stereo sound, at least 64 colors and come as a complete system including monitor, modem and printer with nothing further required. Oh, I dont read manuals so it had better not need one to get started. I wont pay more than $2000 either and for that I want everything plus a written guarantee. All cables and disks, paper, ribbons etc should be supplied and the entire kit and caboodle should come in no more than three boxes. The parts should be labelled Unit 1, Unit 2 and Unit 3 and there should be one cable connecting each to the other and one to the power sockets English, its a sort of drab rain coat of the sort favoured by furtive perverts sunk low in their seats in sleazoid strip joints and it has that sort of aura as a computer, to me anyway. Reading that Todd Rundgren favours them is simply a confirmation of my worst suspicions.

Quick. Easy. Idiot proof. Fun. Cheap. Call me when you've got one and dont forget that it must also be fast, expandable by simply plugging something in, have stereo sound, at least 64 colors and come as a complete system including monitor, modem and printer with nothing further required. Oh, I dont read manuals so it had better not need one to get started.