I have an Electron with AP1 and AP3 expansions with a 3.5" single sided drive, a STAR LC10 printer and View and Viewsheet cartridges.
I am self taught from the normal manuals which come with the equipment and enjoy discovering what can be achieved with this very simple machine. I use the word processing and spreadsheet facilities extensively.
A short while back I approached a widely advertised Acorn dealer in this area and, in simple terms, asked what I should graduate to and why, if I were to upgrade from the Electron. They totally failed to convince me to change at all. The Electron may be the baby of the Acorn range, but it is a remarkably useful machine, and for me does an excellent job.
It seems to me that your magazine may well provide a good forum for exchanging information, asking questions and prompting the user to seek further usage from his or her Electron.
The sort of things I personally would find of interest would be:
- Guidance on how to produce graphics such as those in the "Taster"
- How printing may be speeded up. My efforts seem to take hours
- View Printer Drivers - how to obtain highlights/underlining. The disks and ROM advertised by Watford Electronics they say are unsuitable
- Advice regarding the usefulness of some of the various add-ons for the Electron which are currently on the market
G. S. German
- I hope to start work on a series of articles about graphics (including animation) in the not too distant future
- Printers and printing are very popular topics for discussion it seems, in particular screen dumps and printer driver - watch this space!
- Please see the next letter!
- We hope to make product reviews a regular feature of EUG!
Will Watts