1990 promises to be the best year yet for the QL. There are lots of new hardware and software products. Many serious QL users will buy hard disks. 24 pin printers are catching on. The Panasonic KXP-1124 (about $300) seems to be the most popular choice. The book QL Superbasic – The Definitive Handbook by Jan Jones is available again through QUANTA. I highly recommend it. On the software front there is a new PC Emulator, PC CONQUEROR, by Digital Precision. We will be checking out in detail starting in this issue. Many QL users have already bought it and others are wondering if they should. The whole QL/PC connection is going to be covered extensively in UPDATE. TEXT87 continues to evolve as an alternative to Quill having many more extra features for those with 24 pin printers. I just released CHAOS BUSTERS described elsewhere in this issue. There is a lot of interest in this utility software area. After all, this mess on our desks was created by the computer. We need the power of the computer to tackle it.
I just received the farewell issue of Quantum Levels. It hurts us to lose such a techically competent magazine. I’m impressed that all funds due the subscribers are being refunded. We certainly owe a lot to Tom Bent, Jeff Moore, and Basil Wentworth for their hard work and high standards. We hope that they will continue to play a role in Sinclair Computing with the QL. In the New World, Update seems to be the only magazine left reliably providing serious coverage of the QL. Since you are reading this you are probably a subscriber, but you can try getting other QL users to you know to subscribe. It is critical for us to feel a demand in the coming months to insure that UPDATE will continue to be published.. Also, we each should support as many user groups as we can and become members of SNUG. If we fail to keep our main communications trunk alive we will all wither on the branches. Even with all its quirks the QL is a remarkably capable computer and it has many useful years ahead.
In this issue of Update we master PRINTING with QUILL. This is an area of immense confusion but Peter Hale guides us through how to configure the Quill software for printing. Next issue Bill Jones will explore the subject in more detail. Also in this issue I will explore plotting curves with EASEL, Bob Hartung will review PC CONQUEROR. He and Bill Jones will explore the concepts of Disk Operating Systems. Dave Youngquist reviews FLASHBACK and gives us a Superbasic program to put Directories in a file suitable for import to Flashback. Tim Stoddard provides the first part of a much needed User Guide for the Trump Card.
Next issue continues David McCall‘s series on Windows and another part of Tim’s Trump Manual. I will begin reviewing PC verisons of the PSION suite with my Amstrad MS-DOS portable. 1990 should be a good year! Bill Cable.