I was in Software Etc one afternoon and happened to overhear a woman commenting to a salesman about the amount of Macintosh software available in the store. "You're deep in the heart of IBM country",said the salesman as he whisked her past their ever increasing cartridge game section to show her their extensive assortment of IBM software. I turned my back on the horrible scene, blocking the image from my mind and went immediately to the Amiga section. If you've ever been to Software Etc you know that the Amiga software is waaaaay in the back where it won't offend anyone or cause blindness in small children. After examining the same dusty titles that I examined the week before, I ran screaming.
Several weeks later I saw an ad on a television station out of Syracuse for Industrial Color Labs. Naturally I paid absolutely no attention to it. At the end of the ad I heard the words,"Industrial Color Labs features a complete line of Amiga computers". Leaping from my easy chair, I was amazed to see a camera shot of a line of working Amigas and a Video Toaster.
When I came to three hours later, I headed for Syracuse.
ICL is located at the corner of routes 5 and 92 in the town of Fayetteville which was very easy for me to get to from my home in Norwich. Upon entering I did not know where to start. My head began to spin as I literally skipped through the store. As for Amigas the commercial didn't lie. They had a 500 up and running an amazing pinball simulator (I still kick myself for not getting the name of it). They also had a 3000 and a few 2500's running some amazing animations. They had a Video Toaster set up and I'm pretty sure I had tears in my eyes when I touched it.
At this point it was all I could do to keep from bursting into song. I leaped past accelerator boards. I danced past disk drives. I spun and twirled past modems. I believe I even moonwalked as I passed the mice and joysticks. I've never experienced a full cardiac arrest but I got sort of an idea what it feels like as my eyes fell upon the software.
Where I was normally used to seeing Amiga software in the standard bottom shelf/back of store display, At ICL they had aisles, that's right I said aisles of software. They had games I had never seen outside of a Tenex catalog. Graphics and sound titles too numerous to mention were stacked in neat little rows. Any word processor you could think of was right at your fingertips (I scarfed one up before I left). They had enough disk based Amiga magazines to fill a grocery cart. If you can't find what you're looking for at ICL, you've got problems.
I'm glad I had my credit card with me. I had been looking at printers for a long time and at ICL they had just what I needed. I picked up a Citizen GSX-130 24 wire color printer which I am very happy with. Now, here's why I like ICL the most. When I got my printer home it would not work. Now, I am a casual Amiga user. I'm the kind of person who was amazed when I found out you could type "?" instead of "PRINT" in a basic program. After several hours of trying to work the printer I got on the phone to ICL. To make a long story short (too late) I took my printer and my Amiga to ICL and they fixed me up in no time. The problem was in my Amiga and when they found that I had driven from Norwich they fixed it on the spot rather than have me make another trip to Syracuse. The bill was amazingly low and I thanked them 'till I was hoarse.
Here's the bottom line, Industrial Color Labs is an oasis in the computer wasteland that is NYS. It is a healthy drive from the Binghamton area but worth every mile. Thoughts of ICL invade my sleep and make me long to return there. Any Amiga user who doesn't check this place out should be slapped repeatedly.
One final note. ICL does have a small IBM software selection. It consists of about 25 titles and is way in the back, safely out of the way of skipping, singing Amiga lunatics.
Dr. Torgo