Educational subsidies

From: Lawrence Walker <lwalker_at_mail.interlog.com>
Date: Mon Oct 19 23:00:48 1998

On 19 Oct 98 at 10:43, Hans Franke wrote:

> > The influence of schools on computers is interesting. Atari managed to crack
> > the German educational system and as a result the best programs for the Atari
> > ST have come from Germany.
>
> I would like to agree, but the situation was quite a bit different.
>
> First of all until the end of the 80s there was almost no official
> state programm to put computers in every school - some schools did
> it on their own, with city or parrent founding. Around 88/89 all
> states had programms, but they soly founded IBM alikes.
>
> In the early 80s, computers at school have been Comodore. almost
> nothing else. PETs, CBM 3000's and 4000's. Later on also C64.
> Some schools (especialy in Bavaria) switched later on for AMIGAs.
>
 Oh well another bit of folklore down the tubes. And I thought that
the Tramiels had at least done one thing right in their marketing.
 This was the reason I heard for the excellence and number of Atari
programs coming out of Germany. But from what you're saying it
was driven by the SOHO market.

> Atari never had a big hit (beside from single schools) with their
> STs in education. BUT the ST hits the private and small bussines
> market in Germany like a Blitz. Low price, good performance and
> especialy the superior b&w crt made it possible. Later on the SLM
> widened the gap once more. Until Atari failed to offer real upgrade
> machines (the Megas where just new cases) Atari has been the single
> biggest PC manufacturer in the home/small buz market. And with
> programms like Calamus they hit the DTP market from below (the
> beautiful b&w crt was just like an invitation)- Apple could have
> had learend a lesson, but they prefered to shrink their share.
>
> > Programs such as Steinbergs Cubase and
> > E-logic's Notator started out on Ataris partly because of it's music
> > capabilities but mainly because of it beimg the machine so many Germans began
> > with. They were both ported to Wintel and Mac. Another example is Calamus the
> > desktop publishing program.
>
> Jep, but the Musik thing was just insired by the build in MIDI
> ports. Almost instantly after apearing, independant musicians
> started to develop Software for the ST - lots of them never had
> any programming experiance at all - just fascinated by the idea
> to have a free programmable MIDI controler for less than 2000 Mark.
>
> Still today, Atari is a must for music making.
>
> Ataris 'power without the price' philosopy meets the market
> completely right. They just failed to dig further for gold.
>
> The AMIGA, later on, never catched the ST in the 'professional'
> market, only in the home/games area - Here Commodore had the
> advantage of the C64 and the fact that most students had an
> Commodore (PET, CBM or C64) as first computer in school.
>
 Similiar to Canada but also a lot of 2600's were sold which in some cases
led to the other Atari 8-bitters and then to the STs. The similarities between
the GEOS desktop and the ST GEM would make for an easy transition too
but in NA it never really caught on except in music circles.

> > To this day Germany is still the center for most
> > Atari ST activity and where the new clones are coming out of.
>
> Jau - and I'm eagerly waiting for my Milan-060 :)
> But don't forget about France where Atari is also still
> strong - And Holland of course.
>
I'd love to have one but they're a bit expensive. A company here in
Canada was assembling Falcon clones for the N.A. market for a while
but they seem to have disappeared.

> Gruss
> H.
>
> --
> Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
> HRK
>
>
lwalker_at_interlog.com
Received on Mon Oct 19 1998 - 23:00:48 BST