2 New Atari STs Tackle Wide Range of Chores
Every time I rent a movie from my local video store I’m reminded that virtually any computer can serve a business need if you’ve got the software to do it. At the video store, an old Atari is in constant use to keep track of customers and the tapes they rent.
Atari history is a little complicated, if you haven’t been keeping track. The company was taken over last year by Jack Tramiel, who used to run Commodore. Under Tramiel’s control, Atari introduced a couple of slick new 16-bit computers, the 520 ST and 1040 ST.
The new Ataris compete with the Commodore Amiga at a lower price and with some different features. Both the Atari and Amiga use the same Motorola 68000 microprocessor chip and 3 1/2-inch disks as the Apple Macintosh, and they are strong on graphics. They also are strong on color, which the Mac doesn’t have. None of the three brands of computers run the others’ programs.
The Atari 520 ST comes with 512 kilobytes of operating memory, an external floppy disk drive and monochrome monitor for a suggested retail price of $799, or $999 with a color monitor. The more powerful 1040 ST comes in a different case with built-in floppy drive, a full megabyte of operating memory and either the monochrome monitor ($999) or color monitor ($1,199).
An external 20 megabyte hard disk is available as a $799 option, as are 360K or 720K external floppy drive units.
The 94-key keyboard includes 10 programmable function keys and separate cursor control and numeric entry keypads. The monochrome monitor has about 30% higher resolution than the Macintosh, providing exceptionally sharp graphics and text. The color monitor can display 16 colors at once in low-resolution mode, which works well with games and painting programs.
The value of any computer is the software it runs, of course, and there is now a sufficient variety of programs available for the Atari to let it serve a wide range of small-business needs.
One solid business program that has done very well in the IBM PC marketplace is the Dac-Easy Accounting package published by Dac Software. It is available for Atari ST computers, (suggested retail $69.95), as is the companion Dac-Easy Payroll program ($49.95). Both are published by Dac Software Inc., (800) 992-7779.
A powerful relational database program called dBMAN from Versasoft Corp. is available for the Atari ST models at a suggested price of $149.95. Also available for most other popular personal computers, dBMAN is a command driven program similar to dBASE III.
Up to 10 Databases
It allows you to have up to 10 databases open simultaneously so that you may access information from any of them. The Atari version has just as much power as the IBM version, allowing each record to contain up to 128 separate fields storing a combined total of up to 4,000 characters of data. A single database could theoretically have up to 2 billion records, a limit far beyond present data storage capacities. Versasoft is headquartered at 4340 Almaden Expressway, No. 250, San Jose, Calif. 95118.
A fascinating color graphic order-entry system has been developed for the Atari by VideoTouch Corp. of Springfield, Ore., (503) 746-2192. The $5,000 package includes a special monitor that displays product names--menu choices for a restaurant, for instance. The order taker simply touches the screen where the desired product name or color graphic symbol is displayed, and the computer adds it to the list of previously selected items, computes the tax and total when finished and makes the appropriate inventory and accounting system entries.
No computer would be suitable for business use without a spreadsheet. VIP Professional is one such product for the Atari ST computers. Published by ISD Marketing at 2651 John St., Unit 3, Markham, Ontario, Canada, it works similar to Lotus 1-2-3 and accepts Lotus files.
Taking Advantage
But, since the Atari is a graphics computer, VIP Professional takes advantage of the mouse screen pointing device, graphics symbols and pull-down menus as an alternative to traditional Lotus commands. It is priced at $249.95.
Another important business need is maintaining mailing lists. LabelMaster from Migraph for $39.95 (800-223-DRAW) lets you not only manage your list, but design graphics images to be printed onto your labels along with names and addresses.
Outlining can be a useful function on your computer. MaxThink is such a program, now available for the Atari for $89 from MaxThink, 230 Crocker Ave., Piedmont, Calif. The company also sells a program called Houdini for the same price that lets you link together words, lines, sentences or paragraphs into a network system. It’s supposed to help you organize information by relating it to other pieces of information and lead you to a better understanding of what you’re dealing with.
With the high-resolution black and white graphics available on the Atari ST, it is a natural for the burgeoning desktop publishing field and several packages are available.
Wide Range of Options
Publishing Partner from SoftLogik Corp., 4129 Old Baumgartner, St. Louis, Mo. 63129, costs $149.95 and gives you a wide range of font styles and sizes, multiple columns, graphics and output to printers ranging from dot matrix to the Apple LaserWriter.
The Graphic Artist, $199.95 from Progressive Computer Applications, 2002 McAuliffe Drive, Rockville, Md. 20851, combines computer-aided design concepts with desktop publishing to let you create a mixture of text and graphics on screen or on dot matrix or laser printers or plotters. Another choice is Typesetter Elite from XLEnt Software, P.O. Box 5228, Springfield, Va. 22150, priced at $49.95. It works with dot matrix printers and lets you compose columns of type mixed with graphics images created with drawing and painting programs.
One of the popular painting programs for the Atari ST is DEGAS from Batteries Included, 30 Mural St., Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. The original $39.95 program is now supplemented by an enhanced version called DEGAS Elite selling for $79.95.
These are just a few of the more than 300 programs now available for the Atari ST, but they clearly show two things: that you can do a wide variety of business-oriented tasks on the Atari and that a lot of programmers have found the ST models worth writing software for.
