Welcome to another issue of SUM MAGAZINE. Great things are happening both with SUM and in the Timex computer world.
First, SUM is growing. As a result of word of mouth advertising and an article in the 2/5 U.S.A. Today newspaper which mentioned us, inquiries and subscriptions are coming in at a regular rate. I think this says a lot about the vitality of the Timex market and I hope it says something about the quality of our magazine. As a result of this growth, Joe has already mentioned that we are switching to bulk mailing to save money and keep our subscription price low.
Second, starting with this issue we will PAY for published articles which appear in SUM. Of course, any contributors who wish can waive the payment! This combined with the addition of several new advertisers to our pages should cause SUM to be a bigger bargain than ever. PLEASE MENTION YOU SAW THEIR AD IN SUM WHEN YOU ORDER. This allows them to know where to best spend their advertising dollar and gives SUM a boost.
Hopefully, starting with our next issue, we will go back to a letter quality printer for type in the newsletter. I know that dot matrix lets you know it was really done on a computer, but LQ print looks nicer.
MICRODRIVES! We now have two of the A & J Microdrives in use and I can say that I am totally fascinated by them. Saving and loading is a breeze, though you will have to be creative to figure out how to save some commercial software on them. Loading a program and data file that took 6 to 8 minutes on a cassette now takes about 1 minute with the A & J drive. In addition, there is a centronics parallel port included with the unit (which is not mentioned in most of their ads) which is only awaiting the release of software to make it functional.
For all the members of our local user group, be warned. I plan on showing up at our next meeting with a number of items I’d like to “get rid of”–that is,sell–at very reasonable prices. They include copies of English magazines, software, and hardware. Bring money!