May 1989 MAGazine Volume 5 Number 5

CALENDAR OF EVENTS - MAY 1989

Saturday, May 13, 1989 - 1:00 PM - the General Meeting will be held in the Parrish Building, Room #7, which is east of Jenning's Hall on the campus of State Technical Institute of Memphis. We will discuss topics of general interest to the group. Please look in this newsletter for information about ordering T-shirts, etc. Todd Rooks will continue his lessons about the CLI and will try to have a handout showing the various AMIGA-DOS wildcard symbols and their uses. Todd is the chairperson for the New Users SIG.

FROM THE PRES' KEYBOARD

By Broadus Weatherall

Well, those who didn't make it to the Computer Fair a couple of weeks ago missed a chance to compare almost any of the major, and not so major computer brands. Of course we know which computer would come out on top, but it is nice to have verification.

The Memphis Amiga Group was well represented in our two rooms, and I would like to thanks those whose came out to make the Amiga rooms a real informative and entertaining experience for any visitors. John and Sean Kiss had a tremendous amount of equipment for the music demo - hard to imagine there was a cable or two missing for a while.... and did you ever get everything hooked back up that night? Maybe if you wrote a book on assembly... of the system you have, not the language.

Shane Russell brought his machine with his graphic works and his Battletech manuals to do a little real-time graphic construction for the visitors. Ed Bilson had his 1000 there with his ploter, and was making individualized string art pictures for the folks. David Bath brought 2 - count 'em, two 500's - does that make a 1000? - from Software, Etc, and a combination TV, Monitor, and VCR, for showing some of the video tapes we have received over the past year or so. David also brought a large number of games to show, and play, and Dr. Demo (aka Rick Johnson) also made an appearance to show how those games should be played. Bill Bowers brought the Video Equipment and showed how easy it is to use - once he finally found RED, the pictures looked pretty good... at least a lot better than without. (Hope you found another cable, Bill). Terry Campbell brought his machine also, and I really like the carry case - I didn't know you could get all that in a shoebox - size 87 shoebox.

I also want to acknowledge the participation of Shane Coffman, he spent the whole day helping set-up, tear down and generally give support wherever he could. Don Lockard was also present for most of the day, and rumor has it that Tom Jones was around for a few hours, telling folks which cable went into which plug and why. Charles Williams even showed up in time to sign up a couple of new members. I'm sure I have missed some of the folks who were there lending support, my memory isn't what it used to be, but I want everyone to know that I appreciate their participation in this event. It's a chance for the Group to be in the public eye for at least a few hours, and to let the public know we exist.

While at the fair, I talked with the Commodore Club folks, and they had some news about the CASE meeting for this year. (In case you don't know, CASE stands for Commodore Association of the SouthEast, and they have had yearly computer shows in Nashville for the past 3 or 4 years) Anyway, this year's meeting will be in SEPTEMBER (!?!) instead of the spring - more info later as the late breaking story develops..

I guess I'd better finish now so the newsletter editors can get this included - nothing like doing these things at the last minute.

I look forward to seeing everyone next meeting. JoAnne says "hi".

Bye.

MAGazine

MAGazine
Memphis Amiga Group
Box 17426
Memphis, TN 38187

MAGazine is published monthly by the Memphis Amiga Group (MAG), a nonprofit organization offering assistance to follow Amiga owners and those interested in he Amiga. Membership in the Memphis Amiga Group is available for an annual fee of $20 per family. Memphis Amiga Group officers for 1989 are:

PRESIDENT
Broadus Weatherall
(901) 767-9239

VICE PRESIDENT
Todd Rooks
(901) 373-0198

SECRETARY/TREASURER
Charles Williams
(501) 655-8777

LIBRARIAN
Bill Bowers
(901) 756-8196

MAGazine EDITORS
Sean & John Kiss
(901) 365-1244

JAUG - MEETING WITH MAX TOY, PRES. CBM USA

By Tom Limoncelli

(Continued from last month)

Within the next year he predicted that there would be a sudden large growth of business software. Business graphics is one area to watch. He also suggested [as if he knows the programmers doing it or something :-)] that there is going to be a growth in your basic business software (i.e. you can't buy an Amiga for business right now because there isn't any good accounting / spreadsheet / etc. software... this will be changing). They have started a new distribution system. They have 1700 dealers and CBM wants them all well trained. Next week Computer Factory will start carrying Commodore MS-DOS computers (and slowly introduce the Amiga line).

He started talking about financial things. He said that as far as "Business and General Business".... "the company is strong". They are up $1.5 per share this year. Commodore is actually investing again! They also have cash now!

The ol' complaint department: They get 5,000 phone calls per day. They have set up a better organized system for that but what he really wants to do now is reduce the number of calls. (I.e. if 90% of your calls are the same 5 questions he wants to get those 5 problems solved). He also will be putting more people in support.

Repair support: 18 months ago there vas a 9 month back-log on parts. That is now been fixed. [Fixed? I'd say "reduced". I know there are still some problems there... but it is getting better. -Tom] He made an interesting point. He also wants the repair centers to be strong. Some of the "The place doing my repair can't get parts" complaints were actually about places that hadn't paid their bills.

Ooops. Correction. It was now that he gave us his direct phone number. He stated that he has a habit of sitting at his office from 6-9 PM making phone calls to customers and user groups and companies. He told an interesting story that on his first day he asked for one of every computer they sell in its packaging just like they sell it. He opened each one and installed each one. paraphrased: 'it was one of the biggest learning experiences in my life'. He also request the complaints file and started reading through them.

On his third day he called a person in Atlanta named "Eric" who had written a letter to "President Max Toy". He figured that this guy must be a real big fan because he vas only in office THREE days and this guy addressed a letter to HIM. Well, it turned out this person was a 10-year old. Eric was very nervous but eventually told Has Max about how he loves his C-64, and how all his friends use them. Max vas amazed at how much this little kid loved the computer and did so much with it. (Awwwwww :-). Anyway, (paraphrased) 'Eric then proceeded to tell me explicitly and exactly what he should do to make Commodore a better company' (pause) 'and you know what? He was exactly right.' Basically Eric told him that what makes Commodore so great is the non-Commodore people that stand behind them. All the user groups, net.people, etc.

Max said that he likes talking to his customers and he loves to get ideas from them. He also encouraged people to call him at his direct line when they felt they needed to. [Personal comment: This guy knows his stuff and I'm very happy to have him in charge now]

Then he started to take questions. If he couldn't answer it, he took the people's names & phone numbers and promised to get back to them or have a technician get back to him. He also made sure that everyone understood that he couldn't pre-announce things. [I was happy to see that nobody rudely asked him to make predictions about major things after that warning.]

Question: Since the US is a smaller market than Europe, how does that affect future R&D investments?"

• US is still the 2nd largest as far as sales but the 1st largest market. In the long term CBM will be looking forward to the Pacific Rim & the People's Republic of China). In the short term, CBM will be aggressive as far as storage capabilities and connectivity. (Expect high end AND low end networking solutions in the next year). Also, the US is richer in business products than in Europe.

Question: How will you penetrate the business sector?

• He admitted that CBM has done a bad job so far.
• The 1988 annual report stated that North America lost 23 million dollars. In the future they plan on spending money where leverage is the best. (more on that later).
• Before, Commodore had no direction in their marketing [Remember when someone said that their marketing strategy was "Ready! Shoot! Aim!"?] and had not identified any markets to target. Now they have Identified markets that they will be aiming at. First of all, they are aimed at the video market and has seminars using huge (lavish?) Amiga systems to show off things really being done. In the seminar you learn how to do it with the Amiga and why only the Amiga makes it possible.
• What he meant by leverage was that if the big people use the Amiga, word will spread. For example, all the preliminary work for "Roger Rabbit" was done on Amigas. The title work for "3 Men & A Baby" was done with an Amiga. The people that did those projects will now want to use Amigas on their future projects and word will spread. If you consider that those people also split up and do many, many projects word spreads faster. "now Hollywood is talking". Pepsi is using Amigas to do 100% of their prototyping. They can't risk going into production of an advertisement without knowing every detail FIRST. Only the Amiga lets them do that.
• Commodore's advertising will be solution oriented from now on. This means you will see advertisements in (my example) a marketing trade journal with specific solutions to marketing applications.
• Next week for the first time in years Commodore will start advertising in The Wall Street Journal again!
• Boeing Aircraft one year ago wouldn't talk to Commodore. This year they called Max!

Question: Does Commodore plan on running a BBS?

• They considered it. They feel that the support that they do on QLink, Usenet, Bix and CompuServe, etc is enough and are still considering it but it is not a priority. [Actually, it was Eric that jumped in and mentioned BIX and Osenet]

Question: "How will connectivity be done? Are you going to use AppleTalk?"

Answer: [long pause followed by a grin] "That sounds like a nice idea!"

Question: Student discount plans in the works? What about the educational market place?

• Back when CBM went through tough times they couldn't. At that time others stuck in and they aren't in business any more. He was very glad to say that as of Jan '88 they reentered it. (They are still #2 in education). He said that it takes about 1.5 years to start seeing good educational software. In the future they will "make it easier for students" to own Amigas.
• For higher education, expect connectivity (cheap and high-end), Unix, in-house and third party support.
• The "Teacher of the year award"'s prize is a IBM PS/2 Model 25 [Ugh! Completely useless! IBM could afford something a little nicer considering all the hype they make about donating the prize!] Of course, she won a prize for the innovative things that she did on her... (you guessed it) Amiga!
• Commodore has reinstated their "Teacher Council" which includes all levels of teachers (early learning to college). ...and the "Teacher of the year" is on that council!

Question: What opportunity's for CBM stock should we expect? What does it mean?

• Some info about the fact that CBM stock has been doing well recently and something about what it did today (3/18/89)
• He came on the job 3 days after the crash!
• 1 year ago -- 8x earnings [I'm not sure what that means]
• now -- 11x earnings.
• Prediction -- "two ten or two twenty by the end of this year" (I assumed he meant $21.0 - $22.0 per share???)

(To be continued next month)

FOR SALE

One Casio CZ-1000 Keyboard is for sale for $300.00 (this amount is negotiable). Please contact Tom Jones at 901-386-7564 for further details.

FINANCIAL REPORT

by Charles Williams

The club at present has about 1000 blank disks that are paid for.

LIBRARIAN'S REPORT

By Bill Bowers

The disk given to each new member has been updated and will be available for new members at the next meeting. The updated disk is also available to other members as a "swap disk". Please bring your old disk to the meeting, and I will exchange then at that time.

I also plan to have the Fred Fish disks list updated by the upcoming meeting.

T-SHIRTS AGAIN

By Todd Rooks

I decided to write a short note about the club T-Shirts to keep you informed. Yes! We will take orders for t-shirts, sweaters, and jackets at the next meeting. The style will be the same as before, so the only thing left to decide is from whom to order them. This has been a matter of great concern to me because of the fiasco which occurred in dealing with our last vendor. As you may already know, the last order was two month's overdue and most of the jackets were poorly screened. This time we'll make sure that quality and performance is a top priority. We will require the vendor to complete the order by the meeting after the order was placed (one month). I probably won't have any order forms ready for this issue, so I will record your orders in my book. The prices will probably vary from the last order since we'll have a new vendor. I'll have all that information for you at the next meeting. See you there!

Memphis Amiga Group Membership list as of April 30, 1989

**** Please pay dues by the SECOND SATURDAY of the month on your EXPIRE DATE ****

You may pay dues by mail by sending your $20 check made out to Memphis Amiga Group to
MAG dues, c/o Charles Williams, 13 Lake Drive, Wilson, AR 72395

The Duck Pond BBS - UP to 2400 BPS - (24 hours)
Memphis, TN (901) 761-3729 "ask for Dewey"
Birmingham, AL (205) 822-0956 "ask for Howard"

For MAG Hardware Rental & MAG Software Orders
call Bill Bowers at (901) 756-8196

Special Interest Group Chairpersons