NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/sys/amiga/misc/19045

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-25 | 6.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!das.wang.com!wang!tegra!amicol!Paula_Lieberman
From: [e-mail] (Paula Lieberman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Amigas and Markets and Users
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 24 Dec 92 22:01:17 EDT
Organization: Amiga Colony BBS
Lines: 132

update to below -- I just got a 1200.  It's sitting in my lap (as opposed
to the 500 on the table that I'm typing this on.  Comments on the 1200
accidentally posted to c.s.a.applications rather than here, oops....)

>From: [e-mail]
 (JON M. TAYLOR)
>Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
>Date: 10 Dec 92 23:45:39 GMT
>.References: <[e-mail]>
><[e-mail]>
><[e-mail]>
<[e-mail]>

[lots of discussion about the reasonability of having high
performance  spreadsheets, word processors, database softwware, etc.
available for Amigas deleted]

>This is true, to some extent - it helps to justify the purchase of a
>computer if you can do lots of different (and useful) things with it.
>However, I firmly believe that the 'Jack of all trades, master of none'
idea
>is a very important one to consider here.  Like it or not, the Amiga has
>evolved into a speciality computer.  Commodore does not have the money or
>resources to be able to push to Amiga onto business desktops.

You're defining the *video business* and *presentation systems* as NOT
being "business desktops*!??!"?  People -are- using Amigas for business,
which BY DEFINITION makes them *business machines* -- for that matter,
the lowly 500, soon to be supplanted by a 1200 [I don't have much of a
need for a card cage and the price premium for it, I don't have the funds
for $1500 sound and video and graphics cards, nor any compelling need for
them, so WHY should I need/want to go pay nearly $3000 for a 4000 compared
to under $1000 for a 1200 with the exact same graphics modes and sound?
The 1200 performance is lower, and I DON'T LIKE THE IDEA OF POWERING A
1993 COMPUTER with a 12 years old  68020 architecture, and especially not
the even more frontally  lobotomized 68EC020

(WHY not a 68030, so that
I could use Gigamem to use  the hard drive when trying to deal with DTP
stuff and graphics processing  and multiple apps running simultaneously,
that want to grab more RAM than anyone except Dave Haynie has in their
machine -- yes, I KNOW VM is SLOW,   BUT it beats getting requesters that
say, "NOT ENOUGH MEMORY TO.....".  It's the difference between NOT being
able to do certain things at ALL, and doing them SLOWLY -- I'd much
rather have the option to do them, even at a VM crawl!

Yes, the 68030
costs more BUT it's NOT an ancient and decrepit (late 1970s/early 1980s
design architecture concepts and silicon mask implementation) otherwise
utilized in 1993 almost exclusiviely for
embedded control applications that can be done 95% of the time using 256
KB of RAM -- yes, I said 256 KB, which is not even 1 MB. Of the other 5% of

the time 2 MB of ram is almost always quite more than enough (I did some
phone interviews last year for a project and some of the people I talked
were board manufacturers for the embedded computing world, and one of the
questions I was asking was how much and what type of memory was on the
boards).  The 1200, however, is NOT an embedded controller board, it's a
GENERAL PURPOSE personal computer

(Want a dedicated video machine? Quantel will  be very happy to supply
you one at a premium price!   General purpose personal computers are a
lot less expensive, because they are manufactured to general purpose
use and volume production economies  of scale and spreading the
development effort costs across a larger base of machines.)

and applications like Art Expression recommend 2 MB MINIMUM to run.  Want
to run PageStream, BME, Art Expressions,and PageLiner at the same time,
or Professional Page, Professional Draw, and ProCalc at the same time?
2 MB is a joke! Want to import pictures into Art Department Pro?  Cary
Wasserman told me that one image he was just trying to LOOK at in ADPro
he couldn't even load into the program, because ADPro gave him a
requester saying 20 MB of RAM was required!

A PCMCIA card for a 600 or 1200 with 4 MB of memory retails for $350 --
that costs more than a 120 MB IDE hard drive!  I'd rather have the hard
drive and VM!  Yeah, it's SLOWER -- but a lot MORE flexible and
AFFORDABLE!

>> I *like* having the Amiga treated as an overgrown C-64!
>>I don't - I'll leave it at that.

>Why not?  The C-64 and the Amiga were fun!  I don't want the Amiga
>to become successful at the price of turning it into a PC with a blitter.
....

I never wanted a C64 -- no keypad, no function keys, 40 columns, etc.
etc.  Did not meet my Minimum Required Essential Equipment configuration.

>>>I wouldn't mind *at all* if the 2000,3000, and 4000 fell off the face of
the
>>>earth and commodore never made anything but console machines again.
>
>>The high end is what drives Amiga technology.  Many of the neat gadgets
you
can
>>buy for your A500, from companies like GVP, are spin-offs from their
products
>>for the high-end systems.  .... >serious users are the ones with
>>the money to buy this stuff, then, later, GVP can release something like
the
>>530, and the low-end people have something to move to when they want more
speed
>>and a hard drive.  If the high end didn't exist, add-ons for the A500
>>wouldn't be as cheap, or as good, or as plentiful.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I
don't think the percentage of high-end systems is large enough to support a

company like GVP.  I think that most of their development is for the 500.

I expect that you're quite wrong -- GVP didn't even get a 32 bit
accelerator for the 500 out to retail until the latter half of 1992, but
has been selling 32 bit accelerator boards to Amiga 2000 owners for years.

At an order of magnitude of $1000 per GVP accelerator board, even 10,000
boards  is $10,000,000 -- that's just illustrative, but it NOT a sum of
money to  sneer at!  It also ignores all the GVP SCSI interfaces,
whatever the REAL  numbers for GVP accelerator boards, both in pricing
to  distributors/dealer and unit volume may be, and sales of other GVP
products.

There's a term called "niche market."  A company can be very happy and
profitable with a small piece of a large piece -- I've talked to a lot of
folks who're niche players with sales of more than $10,000,000 per year.
That's obviously not Commodore, which is around $1,000,000,000 per year.
But something too small for Commodore, can make someone else a lot of
sales.


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