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Quality Software claims that its Quick-Copyer utility program is 10 times faster than the TI Disk Manager cartridge when it comes to doing backup copies. Quality Software, of Washington, D.C., says Quick-Copyer "is almost like having a second disk drive, only it is faster and cheaper." The company says its program will copy a single-sided disk in three passes or less, six passes or less for a double-sided disk. The program will run out of Extended BASIC, Editor I Assembler or Mini-Memory. A 32K memory
expansion is required. The cost is $39. 95 plus $2 for shipping and handling.
===MB drops expander===
After more than a year of development and after finally releasing its long-awaited voice expander system for the TI99/4A computer, Milton Bradley is leaving the home computer market. It is one of the first non-computer companies to suffer heavily from the turmoil in today's home computer market. Prior to TI's announcement that it would cease the production of home computers, Atari told Milton Bradley that it would not honor its contract to utilize a similar voice recognition system with its home computers. The company then had its hopes pinned solely on TI. When TI dropped the ball, Milton Bradley was left standing out in the cold with a $100+ system that would allow users to play high-priced game software, not all of which used the voice recognition capabilities of the MB expander. The voice expander finally reached the market in November but was withdrawn almost immediately. The company cited the lack of software support as the reason for recalling the expander.
Actually, it may not have been a very good idea in the first place, according to some analysts. Game cartridges for the system were priced as high as $50. One cartridge, a simulation of baseball, was very similar to Intellivision's baseball cartridge. The basic difference was in the voice-recognition capabilities of the expander. However, there is some question as to whether consumers would agree to pay $100 or more for the expander hardware plus $50 for a game cartridge that could be purchased for half the price on other systems, sans the voice recognition capabilities. Voice recognition at this point remains more of a novelty than a useful feature in home computers.
So what happened to the several thousand MBX systems that were produced? According to a TI spokesman, the units were gobbled up by TI and Milton Bradley employees.
