Atari Writer vs SpeedScript 3.0

[Forrest]

I highly disagree the Atari 8-bit was barely sufficient for productive work. I wrote many, many papers in college with AtariWriter and it never let me down. The text was sharp on a color TV.

[flashjazzcat]

Agreed. My only means of producing printed written documents was an A8, TextPro/AtariWriter Plus (and later The Last Word), Daisy-Dot II and a Star LC10 printer right up until the year 2000 or so. That got me through college assignments, University dissertation, creative writing, CV, job applications, etc, no problem at all.

[Atari8guy]

Battle!

[_The Doctor__]

I'd say productive work on the Atari is what got us back to the future in more ways than one. I am not sure why people say the things they do sometimes.

[gozar]

This is how good AtariWriter was at the time. Freshman year at college there were 4 computers in my corridor. A Mac that no one was allowed to touch, an original IBM PC that no one wanted to touch, and Apple ][+ without lowercase characters, and my Atari 800XL. Half the corridor typed up their papers in AtariWriter instead of walking to a computer lab, I still have several disks of other people's work from the time.

 

 

[Big Player]

I agree about the productivity of the Atari 8-bits. I could have used my 800XL through college.

 

I did use it through June 1988, when I graduated from high school.  I considered taking it with me to college but my freshman year roommate brought his Radio Shack MS-DOS compatible computer. Space in the dorms was tight and we had to dedicate one of the desks to the computer and printer.

 

The university I attended (Ohio State) had a ton of computer labs, including one that was open 24/7, with IBM PC's and Mac's, so I had that option as well. I had to use the labs a few times during freshman year when we both had papers due at the same time.

 

If I had gone to a smaller school and not had a roommate with a computer, I would have taken my Atari and used it.  The only feature I missed was spell check, which I could have if I had bought a 130XE or a different word processor than PaperClip.