CompuServe Messages

Richard – I was just brousing through one of the local computer rags which consist mainly of advertisements for new systems. It is surprising that the prices of PCs just keep sliding. Numerous businesses are selling fully configured 33mhz 486 boxes at under $1500. There are even some basic systems for under $1000. And a basic system usually includes a SVGA card(about $25), a hard disk, 4 megs, and, of course, a clock. Even a Soundblaster or other sound cards are under $150 and it is definitely not required to run windows. My point was that these other computers, PCs and Macs, are sold with everything that you need to run most software. While an Amiga 1200 may have a street price around $600, it is misleading because when you are finished adding all the little do-dads that you need, you are over $1000 plus the monitor. Some of these do-dads, like SCSI, an HD floppy, and 4 meg of RAM could be built in at the factory much cheaper. The result would be a computer costing more than $600 but it would be a better value to the customer because everything necessary would be included and the expansion slot/slots would not be wasted. I suppose that you could argue that CBM standardized on SCSI because that was the only kind of HD controller that you could get for an Amiga. I personally think this is a silly thing to debate since probably less than a third of Amigas worldwide have SCSI and now that the 600, 1200, and 4000 come with IDE controllers, what was a budding standard is completely out the window. I hope that I've made myself clearer. I still prefer my Amiga to the Mac or PC/windos. – Charles