#Stay Loyal or Defect?
13 messages in this thread
All:
I have lead a hectic life the last 12 months or so, and have gotten out of
touch with developements in the Amiga community. I have also found myself in
need of a new computer. I was thinking about it last week, and even went so
far as to buy several computer mags, but had come the conclusion that my
decrepit old A1000 could make it until summer when I would have more free time
(maybe lots – I work for Boeing, and might get laid off 🙁 ). Fate
intervened: the head stepping motor on my df0: failed yesterday. I swapped
the guts of df1: inside, and then the hard drive and the ram exp refused to
operate. I am writing to you all on a 512k one-drive A1000. Not a pleasant
experience.
I pose this question: I mostly use (used?) my computer for writing
fiction these days. I don't do video, and I find Prowrite feeble for large
dosuments. The print output on my DJ500 is limited by the driving software,
and I am tired of NLQ printouts. Is it just the obsolete software and
hardware, or should I go out and get a Mac? (Blasphemy! Stone him!)
Seriously, what are my best options $2k and under?
—————————————————————–TL—–
I haven't used ProWrite, so I don't really have any recommendations there.
You might want to check out the A1200 at your local dealer. If he doesn't
have ProWrite, see if you can take it down with there with a large
document and see how it feels.
Good luck with the job.
Steve
Under $2k – get an Amiga 1200HD, add some ram to it, and get FinalCopy II.
You should get pretty good looking output on your DJ. Use the HP_LJ.lzh
driver from the libraries.
73, Kelly
Kelly –
I was seriously underwhelmed with the original FinalCopy. Is the new
version really better? Prowrite has serious difficulties with documents only
ten or fifteen pages long, and I was forced to break one piece out into
multiple files (one per chapter). Really a pain. I use Microsoft word
four-point-something-or-other and work, and maybe I'm just getting spoiled. 🙂
—————————————————–TL——–
Trev,
RUN out and pick up an Amiga 1200HD. That'll cost you under $1k, then
spend the rest on an inexpensive postscript laser printer! You'll love the
printouts, you'll be able to use some (maybe most?) of your old software
(although you may hve to upgrade to current versions) and you'll have
msdos low density disk compatability!
Mike-
Can I kill that abominal flicker with an A1200? I'm willing to pop for a
multisync if that's what it takes (and isn't TOO expensive.)
—————————————————–TL——–
Trev,
The A1200 uses deinterlacing s/w that will give you flicker-free
displays… a multi-sync will allow you to use all of the AGA modes.
For under $2k, get the new 4000/EC030 (MSRP is $2195 but I've seen street
pricing down to the $1700 range. It comes with AmigaDOS 3.0 which has HP
printer drivers.
-sja
Trevor:
As a pro writer, I've been very happy with Excellence! 3.0. The status of
its maker, Micro-Systems Software, is in doubt at the moment, but as for a
pure writing tool on the Amiga, it even outperforms Wordperfect, and it's
a solid program, so even if MSS goes down, the need for tech support is
unlikely. It lets me type fast (it has even kept up with my 90 wpm on a
FIFTY-page, 160K file, losing almost none of its pep in the scrolling
department, either). It also has a great dictionary/speller/thesaurus,
grammar checker and lots of little bells and whistles like glossaries and
macros (which made the original Microsoft Word so powerful). Bookmarks to
let you pop around in your great American novel at will, autohyphenation,
table of contents and indexing automatically, etc. etc. Not bad for about
a hundred bucks.
But the output is only passable, unless you use E's postscript mode. On a
DeskJet with one of the third party drivers (Super DJC, for instance) it
ought to suffice. Me, I import over to ProPage for really fine output when
the writing's done. ProPage keeps all the bold facing, etc. as it
understands E's format. You could even set up a special save macro in
AREXX that would do all this automatically.
The A1200 would make a pretty decent writing machine. Fast (probably about
5-6 times faster than your A1000), good graphics built in (VGA 800x600x256
colors is one of the more modest of its modes) and small footprint. And
with a hard drive (plus Final Copy 1.3 and Deluxe Paint AGA), it's going
for about 700 bucks on special into June.
I agree I just wrote a book on excellence! and love its many features But as
new things come along in WP's I fear it may come time to go to the AMax II Plus
and get the latest WP software for the Mac. For the time being e! is still the
best. Perhaps someone will pick up rights to it and continue to improve it.
What's the name of your book on Excellence, and is it being published? By
whom?
My book is titled Greenhouse Gardener's Companion pub. by Fulcrum It is a how
to book for greenhouse gardeners- how to grow most anything including veggies
to flowers and what to do about bugs. It can be ordered by calling
1-800-992-2908 in case you might be interested. It sells for 19.95 and is over
500 pages. So far it has had great reviews. Thanks for asking. I fear that my
next book will have to be written with a Mac program unfortunately. shane.
Why defect to a mac? What do you need in an AMIGA wordprocessor that your
present one cannot supply? Most of them are quite good anyhow. Why not
just get a copy of AMIGA WORDPERFECT?