Amiga Is a Promising Tool for Graphic Artists
When I first saw Commodore’s Amiga last August, I was impressed--maybe even a little dazzled--by its beautiful color graphics.
Coupled with the promise that a special software program would also allow it to imitate an IBM PC and run all of the fine business programs written for that computer, the Amiga seemed to be an attractive purchase. But introducing a new kind of computer that isn’t compatible with anything else on the market, as is the case of the Amiga without that IBM emulation program, is risky business.
Now, some eight months later, the Amiga is really just getting off the ground. Commodore will offer a $500 rebate on the purchase of a computer and monitor beginning April 7, dropping the retail price to $1,295 for the pair.
The long-promised IBM-emulation software is to be released in late April, packaged with an external 5-inch disk drive for a reported $295 price tag. And, after a slow start, there are now about 100 software titles available for the Amiga.
The machine that I tested, equipped with 512 kilobytes of random access memory, a monitor and two 3 1/2-inch disk drives, will retail for $1,780 with the new rebate.
None of the Amiga software that I used compares to that available for the IBM PC for serious business applications such as word processing, spreadsheet analysis, database management and the like. The IBM-emulation software wasn’t available for review, so it remains to be seen how well it will work.
Tool for Graphic Artists
But the Amiga already is a promising tool for graphic artists to make color sketches to help them plan their work. It also can be used to rough out what the film and television industry call story boards, an early step in visualizing a production.
Aegis Development Inc. of Santa Monica has the best software for those tasks--a two-program package called Aegis Animator and Aegis Images, priced at $139.95.
The animator allows you to create shapes and easily cause them to move on the screen, twisting and turning as you wish. Images, the painting program, provides 16 color patterns--bricks, stripes and the like--as well as 32 colors, which can be custom mixed from a palate of 4,096 possibilities.
Deluxe Paint, by Electronic Arts--priced at $99.95--is another good painting program, although I found it less sophisticated than Aegis Images. The one thing it does have is an opening logo screen with a stunning picture of a brush dripping multicolored paint from a can rendered so well that it looks round. It shows what a real artist can do with the Amiga.
Superb Keyboard
Commodore’s own $49.95 Graphicraft is the least impressive of the three painting programs that I tried.
The only word-processing program that I tried was Commodore’s Textcraft, priced at $125.95. While it’s not an office-quality program, it is excellent for home use and students will love the way it automatically formats term papers for them, right down to the footnotes.
With the Amiga’s graphics screen, you can see boldface and italic type on the screen as you write. Oddly, however, the program does not allow use of the alternate type fonts that come with the computer, the way the painting programs do.
The Amiga keyboard is certainly capable of serving a full-featured word-processing program. It is, in a word, superb, both in layout and touch.
Easy-to-Use Mouse
A diamond of four cursor keys lies close at hand just to the right and below the return key, 10 function keys are lined up across the top and a separate numeric keypad graces the far right side.
The computer comes with a two-button mouse, used to point to colorful symbols on the screen to command the Amiga to perform various tasks. It works smoothly and is easy and natural to use.
The graphic interface, called the workbench, is logically designed and easy to use. Changing the screen colors is fun and simple.
But old computer hands who are used to typing commands to make their machines work will find the Amiga a bit confusing and frustrating. There is a “command line interface†available to serve these folks, but the standard Amiga manual doesn’t tell you how to use it. You have to buy an extra manual for that.
It takes two disks to get the Amiga going, a system disk called kickstart followed by an application program with a copy of the workbench on it. A second disk drive, which is sold as an external accessory, should be considered a necessity. The 3 1/2-inch disks hold 880 kilobytes each.
The computer crashed numerous times as I moved from program to program, indicating that the operating system still has bugs.
When it crashes, an ugly black and red message pops onto the screen with the words guru meditation , followed by a 17-digit number with a decimal point in the middle. I felt neither informed nor amused by that.
Among other programs that impressed me was Analyze, a $99.95 spreadsheet published by Micro Systems Software of Boca Raton, Fla. It makes good use of the graphics interface and is reasonably powerful. The company also publishes On-Line, a $69.95 telecommunications package, and BBS-PC, a bulletin-board program for the Amiga priced at $99.95.
Lattice Programs
The serious computer hobbyists and programmers will want to buy one or more programming packages from Lattice Inc. of Glen Ellyn, Ill., such as the Lattice C Compiler, $149.95; Lattice Screen Editor, $100; Lattice dBC III Library, $150--allowing programmers to create files compatible with dBASE III--and Lattice MacLibrary, $100, a way for Macintosh programmers to write for the Amiga using methods familiar to them from the Macintosh.
Although the Amiga and Macintosh both use the same Motorola 68000 microprocessor chip, neither will run the other’s software.
Lattice also offers Unicalc, a $79.95 spreadsheet as powerful as Analyze but lacking the latter’s pull-down menus and thus not quite as easy to use.
Various Games
Game players are finding an increasing number of programs available on the Amiga, most of them revamped versions of games from other computers.
I looked at some offerings from Electronic Arts, including Archon, $39.95; One on One, $39.95, and Seven Cities of Gold, $39.95.
They all have very elaborate graphics when starting up but, once into the game, they look a lot like versions that run on other computers, with a little more color.
Since this is a color computer, you’ll probably want a color printer to go with it. I tried the Okimate 20, $269, and the Juki 5510, $648.
The Okimate is a color thermal printer, requiring special coated paper. It prints crisp colors, although the hues are not exactly as you see them on the screen. It also prints text 40 or 80 characters per second, depending on the quality desired.
The Juki uses a four-color ribbon and regular paper. As a result, its colors are dull and fuzzy compared to either the screen or the Okimate. It prints text at a fast 180 characters per second in draft mode or 30 characters per second for near letter quality. It also comes with the best printer manual I’ve seen.
The soon-to-be-released IBM-emulation software may open office doors to the Amiga, while the price cut will let it compete with Atari’s less-capable 520 ST, but only time will tell how viable the market for the Amiga really is.
