Using an Atari was pretty much seen as treason amongst the kids I knew - we were all Commodore 64 and/or Amiga users, with some unlucky kids that had parents give them other weird machines that we pitied for their uncool parents rather than make fun of.
An Oric, a Spectrum (both referred to as doorstops), an Amstrad and a TI-99 was the extent of non-Commodore home computers I ever saw at other kids homes.
But the stores near where I lived did sell lots of other models. I remember playing with a Dragon at a store once around the time we got our Commodore 64. And later we saw lots of Amstrad and later Spectrum models which we sort of accepted but nobody wanted to buy. There might've been others on display but if so they didn't make an impression.
I can't remember ever seeing an 8-bit Atari (this was in Norway, btw.), but there were several Atari ST's on display for a few years in the largest local store. GEM was just too damn ugly, though - we were used to that from the 8-bits, but the Amiga spoiled us quickly and the Atari's on display were mostly ignored, while we were busy messing with the Amiga's or typing in small programs on the various 8-bits while the staff wasn't paying attention. One of the staff in my local computer store turned out to be a member of Crusaders for a while if I remember correctly (as did one of my group teachers at uni).
Never actually used an Atari properly. For me it was on the list of competing alternative home computers that we'd slag off based on specs from magazines.
Never wanted one at all, contrary to quite a few other home computers that I found fascinating but never or rarely got a chance to see (in the latter category you'll mostly find machines I was reading about "pre-Amiga" such as the Enterprise 64 for example, mostly because it seemed quite powerful from the ads and just quite different; as well as the BBC's and later Acorn machines - I've only ever seen an Archimedes once at a demo party; and reading about some of the various MSX machines was also fascinating).
