Atari Life

Simon Coward at the business end...

Running a small mission is very similar to running a small business and 
has the same pressures with deadlines and schedules to be met. Although 
people often overlook the Atari as a games machine over the last few years 
it has proved itself as being more than capable of holding it's head up in 
a business environment. It is a good sturdy machine, that has a very 
reliable operating system which also has the benefit of being easy to 
learn. Among my missions five Atari's is one that lives in Eastern Poland, 
far from any technical support. Training consisted of a quick tour of the 
machine and a run through the software, I then left the operator with a 
pile of disks and due to the wonder of the AUTO folder, all she does is 
insert a disk and press the reset button. It's true she's learning more as 
time goes by, but it just shows one of the advantages of the Atari over 
the equivalent PC.

When last year I needed to change my 4mb STe for a machine with better 
graphics I had to look at things from a purely business point of view. 
There was no favouritism and all options were looked at from the point of 
view of the budget we had, and it's probable life expectancy. At the end 
of the day the Falcon won and now runs as the main machine with the old 
STe ready on stand by and keeping the kids entertained. I mention life 
expectancy because missions do not have piles of cash to invest in ever 
more expensive hardware and software. I was recently given a 286 laptop 
that new, cost over œ2500 and just a few years later is viewed as a piece 
of computing history, capable of running nothing but a little word 
processor under DOS. This machine that was built after many ST's, but 
unlike the ST's has since been replaced first first by a 386, then a 486, 
and now a Pentium as it's ex owner struggles to keep up with software 
developments and the latest upgrades to Windows. How many of your PC 
owning friends have had to fight this same battle with ever increasing RAM 
and hard drive space. There are times in business where lack of 
development can save you money.

Let's be honest, the Falcon is not perfect and a little bit more speed 
would help screen redraws in Papyrus, especially if it's a page that's 
heavy in graphics as DTP work so often is. Even here though there is now a 
cheap upgrade with Nemesis which for under œ50 gives the Falcon a good 
kick in the speed department. However when compared to the church offices 
386 that is struggling to push Pressworks along, Papyrus on a Falcon just 
flies, in fact I refuse to use their machine as I just can't bear the 
waiting around.

The Atari has what it takes to make it in the office and in most areas can 
compete very well with it's PC rivals, we do lack colour output software, 
but as I lack a colour printer or photocopier I'll not cry at that but I 
do hope the next version of Papyrus will bring us up to date in this area.