ST Vs IBM
             ~~~~~~~~~

                      R.BROWN
  
    ...Recently, I spent four months in California doing some production 
    work (I'm a filmmaker), and I lugged my Mega 4, Syquest, etc. with me 
    to use whilst I braved both mountain and studio.

    Each day I sat there working on my ST with a 33 mhz 386 PC not two 
    feet from me with a professional developer at that DOS keyboard...
  
    Spell that U-N-I-M-P-R-E-S-S-E-D.
  
    For example: by the time the PC could actually boot to the Norton 
    Desktop for Windows (a far-far cry from Neodesk or the new STe/TT 
    TOS), even with a maths coprocessor - the PC had lost more time than 
    it could _ever_ make up in an average session, say, with it running 
    Lotus and my lowly ST running LDW Power.
  
    And with this example, try loading a BIG (!) spreadsheet into Lotus 
    in the PC environment: welcome to "OUT OF MEMORY" problems, even with 
    'extended' or 'expanded' memory of ANY size. A gigabyte, say.
  
    Pathetic is a word that comes to mind.
  
    Has it been so long that we've forgot that DOS seems not much more 
    than a retread of its 'grandfather', CP/M? Yes, the syntax on that 
    dandy command line has changed...
  
    IBM, DOS, and this ilk have also spawned this "TREMENDOUS and 
    FABULOUS" surfeit of software. Name the significant titles amongst 
    that horde. Get a handful? Ever notice the countless assortment of 
    subset/inferior titles that apparently exist to give options to 
    underacheivers?
  
    What's more, are we disregarding the DOS options available for the ST 
    itself (386 available _right now_...)? Furthermore, there _are_ CLI's 
    available for the ST that brings a "virtual DOS" environment where 
    the power of the ST can be temporarily stripped and the cludgy 
    command line introduced with its attendant, inefficient command set:
  
    cd H:\DIMWITT.ED\OPERATIN.G\SYSTEM\*.YUK, or 'DOS' for short.
  
    And the Mac! So complex that it needs System 7 with "Bubble Help" 
    that adds (for example) the awesome capability of being able to drag 
    a data file on top of its program's icon to have the program run and 
    load the given data file in one fell swoop? Try it in Neodesk on your 
    Atari.
  
    What about those high power platforms on the Mac? Ever try trans-
    porting files amongst similar platforms, say something simple like 
    Freehand to Illustrator?
  
    Both may save an EPS file, but... Ah! The fabulous _third party_ 
    developer, Altsys, will let you buy a $90 program, EPS Exchange, to 
    get those files moving. Best be running Multifinder, I suppose.
  
    Of course, significant primary Mac "education" is possible on an ST 
    running Gadget's Spectre GCR. Maybe not the high end color (-yet-), 
    but certainly a lot of Word, Superpaint, Illustrator, Freehand, 
    Fontographer, Photoshop, Digital Darkroom, Quark and PageMaker 
    (combine the two and get Atari's PageStream from SoftLogik), and a 
    lot more. Work done on the ST in Mac mode can easily be taken to the 
    office Mac on floppy disk.
  
    And being one that works in Mac mode (and on the real thing), what 
    about that Mac OS? World's worst file selection scheme, a quagmire 
    that in itself slows down the user not unlike the "slow boot" of the 
    PC.
  
    Granted, these other platforms offer certain advantages, but, and 
    especially in light of the new progress being shown at Atari (put a 
    finger on the pulse of the new rumors...), now is not the time to 
    either give up on Atari nor be a doomsayer.
  
    Spectacular ST/TT-specific software is now coming of age, including 
    titles like Avant Vektor, Cranach Studio, Calamus SL, Retouche 
    Professional, and others that are equivalent to or surpass _any_ 
    software in either the Mac or DOS environments.
  
    The Atari combines the graphic environment and purported 'ease of 
    use' of the Mac with the logical file handling of DOS in a package 
    that neither the IBM nor Mac can surpass save for a few proprietary 
    applications - and that may be just a matter of time.
  
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