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%% A1200 Optimism From The UK                                by DMYERS %%
%%                                                DMYERS@mh1.mcc.ac.uk %%
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"Large and glowing amounts of A1200 optimism from the UK."

There I was being all despondent about the Amiga dying with the A500
when all of a sudden, A1200 owners started springing up like
squirrels out of hibernation. It seems the good old days are back in
Europe with more A1200s than you can comfortably shake a rather
large stick at ! I`m sure that some people are pissed with where the
BigC have gone, (and where they should be going now), but the rest of
us are using the very best of what`s out there and are making things
even better. Once more Amiga is the computer to have.

Isn`t it time we gave Commodore a break and redirected our energy to 
help people make the right choice in a bewildering computer market. 
All you have to do is get people you know to buy Amiga too !!! Forget 
the A4000 and consider that you can pick up an A1200 - 85Mb HD and a 
German M-Tec board, taking you up to 6Mb RAM with a 68030 processor, 
all for stlg700. Now do you see the light ? Simply point people in the 
correct mail order direction & remind them that their computer will 
be so fast that they will have to glue it to their desk.

Even more good news is it that I have never seen piracy at such a
low level on the Amiga (about time too). Perhaps the Amiga community
passing through unstable waters has in some way shaken off the
parasites, leaving the truly dedicated owners to start things
afresh. Probably not... Probably more to do with the fact that there
is a wealth of well tested and playable software from the A500
available at ridiculously low prices.

Now for a story. Let me tell you about my "humble" A1200 sitting next 
to a 486 DX - 25MHz 4Mb SVGA with soundcard. (Which cost THREE times 
as much may I add). During this direct comparrison of the machines in 
operation while they lived next to each other for a year, (which was 
not a useless technical specification comparrision writen down on 
paper), you will be pleased to know that the cheap & cheerful 
Commodore held it`s head up high - and on many an occasion laughed 
hysterically at the PC. To say that the IBM clone was having 
compatibility problems is like describing a tidalwave as moist. Also, 
the software it was running under Windows still required so much 
extra hardware to make it all worth while that even this stlg1000 plus 
PC was falling over. It is not good to have your Windows Swapfile go 
on holiday when switching to a different application in your 
supposedly multitasking environment.

It seems the more MicroSoft try to make the IBM clones fully 
compatible in the current nightmarish mess of conflicting standards, 
the more the systems become prone to crashing. Maybe they should 
rename Windows 4.0 Chicago to Windows 4.0 Quicksand. MicroSoft might 
be heading towards being the only software corporation in the world 
but bear this quote in mind...

"Just like genetic diversity which prevents an epidemic from wiping
out a whole species at once, diversity in software is a good thing."
- Clifford Stoll.

I have seen an A1200 emulating Windows through a module system as 
someones University project, but to be honest do we really want that ?

I am not saying the PC isn`t good, just take a look at Word6 or Doom. 
What I am saying is that after a year of bickering about which 
machine is the best, myself and my friends are learning to see the 
advantages of each. We all agree, the A1200 is *the* homecomputer.

Spread the word.