marksabbatini

As the guy who writes those "Idiocy" pieces (and apparently may not be much longer, due to the gripes), I should note the "CoCo bashing" is coming from someone who seems to state endlessly it was the primary machine of his younger days. I've owned something like 20 of the machines, about a dozen of which are still in my possession. I also own every copy of The Rainbow and copies of nearly every other CoCo magazine published, not to mention (mostly) legitimate copies of a sizable percentage of the machine's overall software library. Did you ever read Marty Goodman's rants on Delphi back in the day? Nobody can argue he was as knowledgeable and dedicated a CoCo Nut as anybody, but his flamethrowing about all things Tandy was legendary. Fact is, we all owned a second-rate computer the rest of the world laughed at. I can live with that, because I had my reasons for favoring the machine and my emotional security wasn't tied to other people's opinions. But there was an awfully large and shrill bunch of people determined to build the CoCo up and tear anything else down, and ignore the many, many screw-ups coming out of Fort Worth and Kentucky (I'd say less than 20 percent of the reviews in The Rainbow offered anything more than a glowing overhype of the instruction manual). This sort of thing wasn't limited to the CoCo, obviously, which is why there's been so much to tap into for these columns for so long. As for the negative and - according to you, angry - tone: legitimate criticism. I'm no fan of negative whiners in conversation, so I can see how reading that endlessly gets to be a drag. As I mentioned above, I'm guessing the columns is going to get retooled into something else as a result. What it won't be, I guarantee you, is endless gushing about all things wonderful from the old days. Way too many people doing that already.