Have you ever noticed that if you present a young child with two different coloured lollies and ask him to make a choice, the decision generally comes quite quickly? But present him with 40 or 50 and the decision time increases dramatically. Any prospective purchaser must have been faced with a similar problem at the APC show in Sydney when confronted with offerings from nearly 70 stands. Logically, the process of choosing can be reduced to a minimum by applying the following questions: a) How much do I want to spend and b) what do I want to do with the equipment This is possibly an oversimplification but it does save a lot of shoe-leather. On the other hand there are a lot of people who enjoy "just looking" for a variety of their own reasons. Overall, some 35,000 people had visited the show at Centrepoint by the time it closed on the 16th March at 5.00. The Amstrad User had a spot on the AWA-Thom stand alongside seven CPC464's. Thousands upon thousands of entries were received for a competition being run by AWA-Thorn, with three winners each becoming the proud owners of a CPC464. All the visitors were given an opportunity to see and use the many pieces of software on display. Despite the natural tendency towards games, an encouraging number of queries related to educational and business applications Now and again a swarm of school children landed like locusts and devoured every brochure in sight, but amongst them were some very knowledgeable and enthusiastic programmers. One of the disadvantages for people manning the stands (at least, the popular ones) is that there is not much opportunity to have a look round the rest of the show. We found ourselves in this position, but did manage to slip away once, but no way could we cover all the other stands. As far as competition to the CPC464 is concerned, there isn't any. So you can rest assured that if you own one, you've probably got the best micro configuration within the price range. The Amstrad User 04/1985 |
