Q. I've been thinking of buying a new micro for a month or so, and have nearly decided on a Sinclair QL. By 'nearly' I mean that I have only seen it in its business light, and not as a home micro for the programmer/gamer.

Could you tell me if there is likely to be a substantial amount of games software for the QL, and could you explain how I could benefit from the QL's SuperBasic?

Peter Edwards
Camberwell, London

A. You shouldn't assume the QL will turn out to be a business machine. Sinclair was surprised that the Spectrum turned out to be a games machine, and has virtually abandoned predictions about the role of its machines. Clive and Co. seem simply to have pointed the beast at the great Britsh public and crossed their fingers that a couple of million of them will buy it.

Undoubtedly the QL will be used for business, but PCN's prediction is that most of the business user will be on versions of the machine using the QL's circuit board and manufactured by third party suppliers.

As far as games are concerned, a lot of software houses claim to be working on them at the moment, and once programmers have a thorough knowledge of the 68008's capabilities, there should be some pretty spectacular stuff about.

As for SuperBasic, it all really depends on whether or not you're a structure nut - the types you see in Pascal T-shirts, propping up the bar of the Festering Firkin, sipping their pints of Old Ratskin, stroking their lank beards and smoothing their thinning hair.

If you're a fully paid up member of the "Campaign For Real Programming" you'll appreciate SuperBasic's use of procedures and virtual outlawing of GOTO, but you might be one of the shrinking bank of lager drinkers who actually prefer writing unstructured and unintelligible programs.

If you are, don't panic, as it's possible to hack away in a reasonable simulation of Spectrum Basic within SuperBasic, and add SuperBasic structures as and when you need them. And as you drink your lager, you can console yourself with the fact that at least you're not a structure bore...