CompuServe Messages

Some of you know that Amiga Technologies had a first appearance on German TV on Sunday morning. To give you an idea what happened here is an abstract of the show. BTW: Amiga coverage took some twelve minutes embedded in a well known computer show that almost completely ignored the Amiga even in it's best years. To my very surprise, the anchorman just flatly apologized for ignoring the Amiga all those years <g>. From his words one could deduce that somebody just showed him how the Amiga did all those things since 1985 that Win95 is just introducing right now (or at least claiming to do). The first appearance of Amiga Technologies in German TV didn't reveal much (well, almost nothing) about future developments, though. Manfred Schmitt, chairman of Escom, pointed out that with an A1200HD which goes for a little bit less than 1000 Mark ($670) you would get the multimedia ability which would cost twice as much using a PC, since you would have to add on several cards the Amiga has "build in", not to speak of the software bundle that comes with it. Gilles Bourdin, press spokesman of AT, showed a little Scala demo, nothing too thrilling, but stressed how simple it was to use. They also showed an A4000 desktop without detailing which processor (stronger than A1200, they said) it uses. The TV guy spoke about further developement during next year. Bourdin didn't deny but didn't elaborate either. Bourdin said that 80,000 units of the A1200 are sold already and that they hope to sell 100,000 'til the end of the year. No word about the A4000 🙁 . The TV presentator stressed the point (first time in German TV in my knowledge) that the Amiga had all that multimedia abilities as well as multitasking for ten years now that MS-Dos just now is starting to deploy. Manfred Schmitt said in a lenghty interview that they bought C= and Amiga for the well renown name of C= in Europe (second behind IBM) and for the stock of patents that they got along with the Amiga. Schmitt claimed that Microsoft and Intel were "dangerous for the market as a whole". He also said that with the Amiga they expect to hold a technology that would be able to emphasize something different. On questions after new developements Schmitt answered "Yes" but then went into an explanation that todays Amiga needs almost no improvement since it's 32 bit OS and multitasking was already at the state that Win95 was just approaching. He pointed at the sound and video chips of the Amiga and the memory preserving OS. A future application would be that of the Amiga as a "home server", Schmitt said. Combined with (or built in) a wireless telephone following the digital DECT standard (Escom just bought a company that builds that kind of devices) it would be possible to control all kinds of gadgets at home, be it heating or security devices, for instance. Amiga could also be an incentive to Intel/Microsoft and others, Schmitt continued. Amiga would enable Escom to take some actions in that regard, even though Escom was one of the biggest retailer of clones in Europe. Amiga could bring out products that were different, Schmitt said. But then, Microsoft, in his opinion, was targetted more for office, Amiga rather for home market. Joachim Sondermann-Bieker on Amiga AutoPilot 1.80 from Cologne, Germany