Competitive ST due soon

Press, 24 June 1986, Page 25

Competitive ST due soon

The first stocks of Atari’s new ST computers were expected in Christchurch this month following their recent release in New Zealand. Atari’s 520ST and 1040ST computers provide competition for Commodore’s Amiga computer. Offering similar features to the Amiga, the two Atari models, at $2995 and $3795, are cheaper than the $3995 Amiga. Both competing brands are based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor and offer spectacular graphics, sound and user friendliness.

In the United States, where the Atari computers sell for less that SUSI2OO, Atari started with more software for its computers and says it is outselling the Amiga by a ratio of three or four to one.

The same ratio may not follow in New Zealand, where Commodore has the benefit of a loyal and enthusiastic base of users, who are typically more advanced hobbyists that Atari users.

Also, the New Zealand Atari distributor has not kept the same price differential as in the United States, where an Atari 520ST is half the price of an Amiga. A third computer in the same class is the Apple Macintosh, which has less appeal to the home user than the colourful Ataris and Amiga. The Amiga and the Macintosh were criticised by Leonard Tramiel, the vice-president of software development for Atari, when he visited Auckland recently. He described the Macintosh as technologically backward and said that the Amiga’s biggest weakness was its lack of software.

“The ST is very flexible in its internal design,” boasted Leonard Tramiel. “It is 15 per cent faster than the Amiga and more easily expandable.”

Leonard Tramiel is the son of Jack Tramiel, who started Commodore more than 25 years ago and then left Commodore to subsequently buy the personal computer and video

game divisions of the financially troubled Atari, a division of Warner Communications. Another son, Sam Tramiel, is president of Atari and a third son is an executive with the company. Like Commodore, the future of Atari hinges on the success of its latest machines. The Atari 520ST has 512 K bytes of memory and a 360 K-byte floppy

disc dive. Subsequently Atari released the 1040ST, with one megabyte of memory and a 720 K-byte disc drive. Both models use Digital Research’s GEM software environment to provide the windows, icons, mouse support and pull down menus that are also features of the Amiga and Macintosh. A black and white version of the 520ST also sells in New Zealand for

$2490. Leonard Tramiel said that 80 per cent of the machines sold in the United States have a colour monitor, but in Europe 70 per cent are sold with the cheaper black and white monitor. As for the future of ST, Leonard Tramiel said he is looking forward to its entry into desk-top publishing. Atari is also working on hardware to allow the computers to run IBM PC software.