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Plain speaking

Ours is a good platform, but as it gets older, bits of the platform keep falling further behind and this leads to more people abandoning ship. To help maintain it, I would urge authors to write documentation we can all understand.
My Mega STe has to work - hard! I use it for MIDI and it puts in a lot of hours. I have neither the time nor the inclination to plough through reams of instructions, written in Esperanto, which assumes my computer knowledge qualifies me for a senior position with NASA.
Recently I decided to take the plunge and get a modem. With a great deal of help from Jim Hornby of the Wrinklies Club, I got to grips with CIX conferencing and email and suddenly the world was my lobster.
Flushed with success I downloaded the World Wide Web archive to checkout what the internet was all about - well, I'm still wondering!
Read all the documentation files it says! They are scattered all over the place like confetti in a church yard. There are over 150 files to wade through to find them all - I know because I noticed the number when I dumped them all in the trash can! Call me a luddite but I really did try, yet I was completely unable to get it up and running.

So here's the point of this sad tale. I want documentation which tells me how to use the program - much like the instructions which accompany modelling kits. I don't want to know how it works, I don't even want to know why it works - I just want to use it.
I don't want my Atari to be like a vintage car that you tinker with, repair, tune up and polish, but never drive more than five miles, I want the convenience of a modern car - fill it up, get in and drive - Is that really too much to ask?

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Eddie Gray via CIX
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We may well be into the twilight zone of our platform but with the introduction of ST-Guide the quality of useful documentation has never been better. On the other hand Eddie is absolutely right to emphasise the need for non-technical instructions. 
The world of comms is notoriously tricky for beginners to get to grips with but we know it works - hundreds of Atarians are already out there somewhere.
** STGUIDE.GIF here **
Competition between web browsing packages from Oregon Research, the French WenSuite package and PPP-Connect for CAB 2.5 should lead to easier web access.
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Keep the faith

I am writing to anyone thinking of switching to a PC - you don't have to!
My two kids, like most nowadays, use a computer for project work at school. I'd been thinking about buying a PC to enhance the quality of the work they could produce.
With the latest PCs aimed at home use costing well over £1000, plus extra for a printer and bearing in mind it will undoubtedly be outdated next year I thought perhaps I was working at the problem from the wrong end and started to consider upgrading my Atari based system.
I spotted the Protext re-launch in AC#3 and ordered a copy - taking its re-launch as a good omen for my upgrade plan. This latest version is a revelation - full of features I expected to have to buy a PC to get! Protext has a real-time spell checker, a Thesaurus, colour image support (GIF and IMG), print preview, different coloured text output, import/export options including RTF and much more.
I'm running this all from floppies on a 2Mb STe machine with the dictionary loading from reset-proof RAM disk and the Thesaurus on my saved text disk and it all seems to work as fast as the average PC.
Having saved myself a grand I splashed out on an Epson Stylus 100 Colour inkjet, I choose this model because both Protext and Imagecopy have dedicated printer drivers. I looked at several Windows printers but understand they're not suitable for use with Atari systems because they don't include any bitmapped fonts at all.
On my system I settle for 360x360dpi output - although the printer is capable of 720x720dpi if I had more memory. The improvement over my old dot matrix is astonishing - near laser quality. I was also pleased to find older programs such as Write-On and Timeworks include drivers to support this printer.
OK, so we can't use Encarta, but in two years time my Atari will be no more obsolete than the current crop of Pentium PCs!

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Mick Smith, Worthing
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That's true. A ten year old Atari machine can run a pre-emptive multitasking operating system - Windows and Mac OS users are still waiting for this! With a few relatively inexpensive upgrades Atari machines can take advantage of the latest peripherals.
As for not being able to use Encarta, take a look at Infopedia developed by Homa systems. This enables a selection of PC based CD-ROMs to be read on the Atari platform.
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** INFOPEDI.GIF here **