CompuServe Messages

>The Amiga still needs a fullfeatured wordprocessor, spreadsheet and database.< The scary thing is that 4 people responded to say that there _is_ a full-featured database, but the silence on WP and SS is deafening! From what I understand Superbase is an excellent product, but a generation behind the best PC products, I don't know whether further development is being done on it. The most important reason for a top-flight database, I think, would be its ability to provide an easy way to generate custom applications, but I don't think most end-users would buy a better-than-superbase db anyway (unless maybe it was cheap) – that is, I don't think that's what too many Amiga owners and potential owners are frustrated about. While these kinds of things seem to sell well on the PC, on the Mac, the heavy-duty relational databases (Helix, Fourth Dimension, Omnis, Fox) haven't been tremendous sellers. Most people's database needs seem well served by simpler products like Filemaker and the DB modules built into the various Works-type packages. And I've always felt that the Amiga customer is closer to a Mac customer than a PC customer. Still, something that could co-exist on a net and access shared dbase files might let it get past some hurdles, in environments where that capability is required for purchase consideration. (Might that capability already exist?) An Excel-level spreadsheet (or Improv?) would be more important. Especially since, unlike large databases which are generally office-only work, it is somewhat common for someone to want to bring a spreadsheet file from work to home and back (people don't generally need to bring their company database home for the weekend, but they might well bring some spreadsheet files). So the ability to work with Mac or PC spreadsheet files at home, and still retain the level of features they're used to at the office (and the ability to convert in both directions) would be useful to a larger group of people. The funny thing is that most people don't use 10% of what these programs offer, and what they're doing often _could_ be done even on existing Amiga spreadsheets. But if, on paper, the Amiga program doesn't have all the functions of their office program (and some assurance of easy file conversion both ways), people will be scared that they may end up using some function that they won't be able to translate. (There's also an unsolvable problem here – even if there _was_ such a spreadsheet for the Amiga, many people would buy the Mac or PC because they could steal the software from their machine at work, as opposed to having to buy the Amiga equivalent if they chose to go that route. But that's a topic for a whole other discussion.) [continued in the reply]