80-Bus News

Editorial

Questionnaire

Well, I hope that it all went to plan, or else I’m about to make a fool of myself – but then that’s nothing new! The theory is that with the last magazine a Questionnaire went to all of the subscribers to 80-BUS News. (The reason for my uncertainty is that this is being written before the other mag. has come back from the printers.) Now, the purpose of the Questionnaire (from now on referred to as ‘Q’) is many-fold. Firstly it is to find out what equipment you are using – this will then let us know whether an article about, for example, the Polydos operating system, will be read with interest by the 25 per cent (say) of the readership that runs Polydos, or just by the author! Secondly there is a section asking what type of articles you like – this will influence whether we write more about hardware, software or more reviews etc. Thirdly, the section on your likely expansion and product desires will give us an indication of what general direction we should be heading in with you. Fourthly, depending on how modest you are (or aren’t) in answering the ‘knowledge’ part, we can establish the average level of competence, which will let us know how simple or complex we should get. And finally it will keep someone here (yes Dave, you’ve been volunteered!) out of mischief for a considerable time – assuming we actually get some response.

The Prize

When the ‘Q’ went to press we decided that, as we usually get a pitifully low response to requests for input, we needed to offer a prize as an incentive. At the time of writing the ‘Q” we didn’t know what this should reasonably be. Since then Gemini has stepped in and offered a prize of £100 (inc. VAT) of Gemini ‘Goodies’ in the form of a voucher that can be redeemed at any Gemini dealer. In addition to this we will give 10 lucky people a free years subscription to 80-BUS News. So now you have 12 amazing reasons for sending in that ‘Q’ that is still sitting next to your computer:

Being the eternal pessimist what I am, I personally doubt that well receive more than a 20 per cent return rate, so PROOVE ME WRONG. After all, what weight will “70 per cent (of the 3 per cent of the readership that actually replied) wants the entire mag. to be about Comal” carry? Anyway....

This Issue

Somewhere in this issue you will find one of David Hunt’s ramblings. Now the layout used is an experiment, and we would like your reaction to it. Please just scribble a note on your still un-returned ‘Q’, on your re-subscription, on an article, or on a post-card, saying what you think. The cost of printing this mag. has slowly been creeping up and up, and we need to cover this. There are several choices: a) put up the subs (never a very popular idea), b) get the magazine typeset and thus smaller (difficult to justify for the relatively low number of magazines produced and for the additional cost, delays and loss of control incurred), or c) reduce the number of pages. I favour the latter, but one way of keeping the actual quantity of material the same would be to treat most of the magazine the same way as Dave Hunt’s article (i.e. fit two pages onto one). Now even I don’t know exactly what it’ll look like until the magazines are returned from the printer, so I hope it is legible – please let us know what you think. Be seeing you.

P.S. For those of you puzzled by this issue’s front cover, the answer is really quite simple. Read David Parkinson’s article and think about one of the new features of the SVC!! Your answers with the next article you submit please.....