CompuServe Messages

Well, you hit my hot button. Long post warning! And don't take this wrongly; I'm not mad, just excitable. First, I reject the argument that Amigas are "cheap computers that are a poor value." That's pretty sweeping. I suppose you likewise would call a 386 clone a poor value because you have to spend $100 or more to give it sound quality that comes standard on an Amiga, or extra bucks to add more memory to make Windows more than marginally functional. I use Macs and PCs, I know them, and they're not Amigas. Reliability and configuration ease are two hidden costs where the Amiga tends to excel over the other platforms. Besides, if Amigas came from the factory with every last power feature you could want (MIDI port, digitizers, mulitple controllers, extra RAM, etc.) then they'd be priced out of range of more buyers. A person can a plain-vanilla A1200 and modify it as their needs dictate and still be quite competitive with many Macs or PCs, dollar for dollar and feature for feature. And often, the Amiga buyer can come out ahead. Now, C= has publicly stated that all future Amigas will come with CD-ROM drives. If true, that's good in one sense, but it also will push up base pricing, and I expect some people will next turn to whining about that. Sometimes it seems C= can't win with its customers for trying. Me, I prefer base machines with empty slots, because I'm a power user and, like dining at Burger King, I prefer having it my own way. Your assumption that lots of folks are holding off on further Amiga purchases isn't borne out in my experience. Dealers I'm aware of can't keep A1200s and A4000s in stock, and are in some cases back-ordered. No question but that it's a tough market out there for any non-PC machine (Macs included). But that doesn't mean in the least that an Amiga purchase today is a bad bet, if the price is right and the machine does what you want. Otherwise, Universal Studios wouldn't have recently taken delivery on 50 or 60 Toaster-equipped Amigas. You also say that: "The CDTV standard was different enough that you could not use them on an Amiga" and that "if CD32 turns out to be like CDTV, it won't become a peripheral for the Amiga, either." Sorry, but just because people weren't interested in using CDTV as a peripheral doesn't mean it doesn't work well as one. I'm using my CDTV with my A2000 right now, courtesy of Parnet. "Three-year-old PD software" it may be, but so what? It works extremely well as a cheap yet powerful CD-ROM peripheral (my total outlay was under $350 for all-new gear). Plus, in the bargain I've got a second Amiga computer with additional I/O ports, not to mention the CDTV software that came bundled free. With the AsimWare third-party driver, you can even use CDTV to access data on Mac and IBM CD-ROM discs pretty transparently, and the newest upgrade will also let you read Photo CD disks with non-CDTV drives. You still can't run PC/Mac programs without an appropriate emulator, of course; but I can't imagine an Amiga CD-ROM drive that would make that totally transparent, any more than there are simple CD-ROM setups for PCs that can run Mac stuff. CD-32 ought to be even more user friendly than CDTV, possibly except for older machine compatibility with AGA. In short, the hardware isn't that big an issue; for me it's the software. Face it; we'll likely never have the sheer range of titles available for PCs. But who cares? For me, the Fred Fish On-Line disk alone is worth the price of the entire CDTV setup. I can launch almost any program on any Fish disk right from my A2000 keyboard, via Parnet. Not too shabby! That's freed up some of my hard drive space for other stuff. If you had told me five years ago that eventually for $350 I could have nearly a gigabyte of Amiga programs available on my A2000, I'd have laughed. Nor has Commodore "abandoned" the SCSI standard. There is the A4091 SCSI card for the A4000 and A1200 as well as third-party controllers. All of this isn't just a problem for C=, you know. Just try buying a SCSI controller for a PC that will adapt to a CD-ROM drive. They're available, but usually they're crippled SCSI adapters that refuse to work with any other kind of peripheral. Meanwhile, my trusty old (there's that word again!) A2091 SCSI controller can handle most any combination of third-party CD-ROM drive, hard disk, floptical drive, etc., up to the seven-device limit. Perception is reality, I guess. — Ron Legro, Milwaukee via AUTOPILOT (the only way to fly)