CompuServe Messages

Eric, Just to clarify things….. <<<Wouldn't the same apply to those who got the Raptor, only to then be later offered the Raptor+ for the same SRP "just a few months after the original was shipped?">>> Raptor+ is priced at $3000 more than the original Raptor and delivers nearly twice the performance. I think most people are interested in better value. My point is that all the hub bub about these other platforms is about running software that's currently not available for it and may not be for some time. We refrained from shipping any hardware until we were certain Newtek was shipping ScreamerNet. Ask around, we probably displayed more restraint than most vendors in our position. We even made some people angry because we wouldn't ship, can you imagine? The Shablamm! board is not a bad solution assuming you already have a VL-bus PC to plug it into and 32MBs of memory satisfies your needs. You can put more RAM on it but its not the fast EDRAM, its the normal DRAM and much slower. But it works. As for NIH killing C=, I don't believe anyone here believes that the Amiga should be anything other than what it is and if not for its unique clocking it wouldn't have fit the needs of the Toaster. No other computer can match the Amiga's inherent, and proprietary, video timing. Without the Amiga thered be no Toaster and without the Toaster there'd be no LW… and so on. An undifferentiated hardware product is just what makes the PC industry so large. But its monopolistic character has served to stifle innovation and technology development. Suppose SGI just said "screw it, we'll just run on PCs." Think you would honor them with $20-$30K for a uniprocessor system and allow them 50 percent margins. Perhaps their NIH is exactly why they're so successful and companies like DeskStation would find it appealing to emulate them as opposed the Cobra guys who seem to be emulating Gateway. As I said in my previous post, anybody with half a brain could build that Cobra system. I guess I forgot to mention that you'd also need a screw driver. Don P.S. Please don't tell the Cobra guys I've said all this stuff. I know them quite well and they probably wouldn't appreciate any of this, besides I'm not even suppose to be talking you. As for Shablamm!, I just spent the last couple of days in NY with Tom North their president and CEO. He's got more than half a brain and you're right, he's shipping. They've got a neat little product although I'm not sure how well wildly the world will embrace it. But he's a good guy and I hope he does well. I'm sure the review you did will please him.