Floppyshop Press Release No.1

Floppyshop Press Release - 5th April 1997

ATARI SHOW UPDATE

Following the success of the 1996 Atari Shows, Floppyshop are pleased to announce that they will be attending the Birmingham, London and Glasgow events on 26th/27th April and 11th May 1997. The last events were a real eye-opener to us. The level of enthusiasm was indescribable and they provided an excellent opportunity for us all to meet up with friends, customers and email buddies we've known for years but never had the pleasure of meeting. More importantly, we've never seen so many people attend events for a 'dead platform', proof indeed that there's still a lot of people who use Atari computers by choice. The enthusiasm shown by those who attended, combined with the sheer dedication of fellow traders made for two enjoyable days out (despite our 1200 mile round trip with no relief driver!).

Mike Goodman has once again taken up the mantle and organised not just two but three events for dedicated Atarians this time round! The inclusion of a Glasgow venue is most welcome for us but just try stopping us attending the Birmingham and London Shows too! Mike puts a massive amount of effort into organising these events as do all the companies who attend. It is therefore important for all dedicated Atari users to come along to their nearest Show if it is at all humanly possible. As well as showing your support for the companies and individuals still around to support you, it is also an excellent opportunity to meet friends, old and new, and to sign up with the growing fraternity of users groups popping up throughout the country. So please make a note in your diaries and pop along if you can make it. We will all be delighted to see you.

Here's a quick roundup of exhibitors, useful Show information and last (but certainly not least!) a report about what Floppyshop are getting up to. Please feel free to re-distribute this text. The more people who know about the Shows, the better for all of us. Hopefully other exhibitors will post similar bulletins in the runup to the shows.

WHO'S WHO

For those of you who missed previous bulletins by Mike and others, here's the current list of exhibitors:

Goodman's
System Solutions
Titan Designs
Black Scorpion
The Upgrade Shop
Console Centre
FaST Club
HiSoft UK
16/32 Systems
Portfolio Club
Calamus User
Atari Computing
Sunrise Audio
Floppyshop
Best Electronics
Disk Mags (Maggie, ST+, AtariPhile and others...)
User Groups (STAG, WAG, AAUG, Wrinklies and more...)

SHOW DETAILS

All Shows from 10am to 5pm. Admission - Adults Ł5 before 2pm, Ł3 after. Children under 16 years Ł1 all day. Special family deals tel: 01782 335650.

BIRMINGHAM

Saturday 26th April. Compton Suite, National Motorcycle Museum, M42, Junction 6, Birmingham. 5 minutes from Birmingham Rail station, only 2 miles from the Airport.

LONDON

Sunday 27th April. Kew, Syon & Hampton Suites, Osterley Hotel, 764 Great West Road, Isleworth, Middlesex. 5 miles from M4, exit 2 or 3. Approx 1 mile from Osterley Tube Station.

GLASGOW

Sunday 11th May. Kintyre Suite, Quality Central Hotel, Gordon Street, Glasgow. Next to Central Station, only 5 minutes from the M8, exit 19.

FLOPPYSHOP LATEST

We are working round the clock to give our customers the best possible selection of products. It's absolutely mad here at the moment with us working on no less than five new product releases! Along with existing commercial releases and special Shareware packs (which proved very popular last time round), we are aiming to have 20 products (compared to 9 last time) available for sale (five of which will make their debuts at the Shows). Everything depends on time and it's going to be tight! Here's a brief rundown of what we can talk about, there's lots more than we're keeping under wraps until the last minute!

POSITIVE IMAGE v2

This one is a MAJOR upgrade on the current release (v1.12) and should be ready in time for Birmingham and London. If not, it will hopefully make its debut in Glasgow. This product is 'in development' so we cannot give out any details at the moment, suffice to say it's going to be BIG NEWS. Don't contact us just now for details, we're too busy getting it finished and unwilling to discuss new features until they are completed. Suffice to say, we'll issue a fresh bulletin nearer the time.

DTP+ Graphics

The first of many new CD-ROM releases from Floppyshop. As the name suggests, this is the one stop answer to all your Desktop Publishing and Graphics needs. How does 3,600 fonts in Calamus, PostScript, True Type and other formats sound? Not enough? Well, how about 8,000 pieces of Clip Art? Still not satisfied? Well there's word processors, printer utilities, printer drivers, DTP support utilities, image processing packages, vector graphics packages, near enough every monochrome and colour graphics package on the Shareware/Freeware/PD scene, graphic conversion utilities, a prestigious collection of professional 'photographs' and a whole lot more besides. See separate press release on this one very soon.

POWERUP

A brand new commercial game. Who said nobody produces Atari games any more? Power Up is a racing car game from MC Soft. The game is seen from an overhead perspective looking down on the track. Five cars participate in each race, two of which can be player controlled. Control is by keyboard or joystick and is much more responsive than similar games of this type. Power Up is unique in that it runs on any Atari computer but has the ability to utilise the blitter and DMA sound (at 25 Khz on the STE/ 50Khz on the TT and Falcon) if your hardware supports it. There's even a special fast scrolling mode for Falcon owners. Even STFM owners get digitised music! It can also output sound to Replay, Replay Professional, Playback, MV16 and Prosound Designer cartridges. There will be 12 different tracks on which to compete, each track having five different scenarios. More details on Power Up nearer the time.

FONT PACKS

Last year our Oxieware collection created a fair amount of interest amongst customers. We will be bringing it along this time too, but with the addition of the Bournemouth collections. Here's a brief summary of what's what:

THE BOURNEMOUTH CFN COLLECTION - An impressive collection of over 300 fonts on 20 disks. They are the result of PostScript fonts converted by John Weller for use with Calamus. What makes these almost unique is the fact that they are supplied as complete font families (with genuine italics and bolds rather than the usual slanted and thickened versions). Where else will you find a complete family of Helvetica in 19 weights and styles? Time and effort have gone into this collection, the result being a collection of professional fonts at PD prices.

THE BOURNEMOUTH POSTSCRIPT COLLECTION - This is the colection of PostScript fonts which formed the broad basis of John Weller's Bournemouth Collection. All in all this is a very well presented collection with its main strength being the sheer number of complete font families rather than one off single fonts. Supplied on 16 disks.

CLIP ART

Our Public Domain Vector Clip Art colection in GEM format was popular last time so we will have more stock for these Shows. In addition we will have an exclusive commercial set of Vector Clip Art disks by John Weller in Calamus CVG format. These are currently being completed (the first three disks are astounding!) and we expect the set to comprise of five or six disks. More details on this new product nearer to the Shows. OTHER PRODUCTS

We will of course have have all our commercial software, Positive Image v1.12, Family Roots 2, EZ-Art Professional, Easy Stitch and DegasArt along with a number of specially made up Shareware packs covering such a wide range of subject matter than there's guaranteed to be something for everyone. There's also another brand new wildly addictive game but we're not talking about it just yet... WEB NEWS

Our WWW pages are currently being updated (sorry but these things get out of date so quickly!). The new site will feature all our new releases and several new services we are about to launch. Although everything is unchanged at the moment, we expect the new pages to be up late April or early May. Keep an eye on:

http://www.netkonect.net/tachyon/flopshop

FINALLY

The above information (with regard to product features and availability) is provisional and subject to change without notice. Prices are not yet finalised but you can be sure of a bargain on the day. As more information becomes available, we will be posting updates to this bulletin. Thank you for taking the time to read this message. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Floppyshop, PO Box 273, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. AB15 8GJ.
Tel: 01224 312756 (Intl +44 1224 312756)
email: sdelaney@steil.wintermute.co.uk