Survey conclusions

The survey forms were collated by Martin Milner with conclusions by Martin Milner and Joe Connor...

First of all thanks to the 314 readers who sent in their survey forms. 10 respondents found the editorial style too simple, 14 found it too complicated and the remaining 92% thought it was about right. 8% wanted free or paid Reader ads.

Requests for more Tutorials, DIY and Q&A's have been duly noted. The most popular sections of the magazine were News, Reviews and Tutorials. Although more people own scanners than modems the number of respondents online and interested in comms is higher than any previous survey of Atari readers.

The most popular application was unsurprisingly) word processing, followed by graphics, games, database, communications, DTP, music and programming, spreadsheets and education in that order.

Respondents collectively own 517 computers, with less than 5% using emulators. Despite the legendary unpopularity of the STe range over half the respondents use an STe or Mega STe - games programmers take note!

Around three quarters of users have used Atari machines for at least five years with only a handful of users still struggling with less than 1Mb of memory and floppy based systems which means we can turn our attention to screen displays. Almost half of the respondents are using colour monitors or TVs, presumably in medium resolution. We'd encourage you all to add a mono monitor - leaving colour for games sessions. ST mono resolution is much easier on the eyes and will enhance your enjoyment of Atari computing dramatically!

Nearly three quarters of respondents use TOS with a surprisingly high number of people using MultiTOS. Despite its almost universal acceptance amongst 'power' users, MagiC has not replaced TOS as the OS of choice but is clearly more popular than Geneva. Added together around 25% of respondents are multitasking.

Although the largest group of people heard about Atari Computing online we owe Floppyshop a pat on the back for their efforts promoting the magazine.