CompuServe Messages

An Amiga with 1-2 megs RAM, one floppy, no hard drive and no accelerator isn't exactly the overwhelming mode anymore even in Europe, where most folks own A500s. One of the British Amiga mags (which sell extremely well over there) surveyed its users over a year ago and found that 40% of them had hard drives. The numbers no doubt have improved since then. That's a low percentage compared to the PC world, certainly, but it reflects the ability of a floppy-only Amiga to run some pretty impressive software. Point is, if developers just started writing AGA-only and hard-drive-only applications, the user base would evolve along, just as happened on the PC. When I bought my first PC, after all, a one floppy, no hard drive system with 256K was considered a power user's platform. The Amiga hasn't had many improvements since '85? Come, come, Dom! Workbench 2.x was a major improvement (outline fonts, CrossDOS built in, etc.), nor would I sniff about AGA or '020 through '040 support. And software quality generally has improved, too, even if we've peaked at the number of available commercial packages. Sure PCs have improved a great deal in the past eight years, but when you're starting out as bad as circa-'85 PCs were (compared to the first Amigas), it'd be hard not to make greater strides. Most PCs in the field then couldn't even handle color, much less graphics, and were saddled with an 8-bit bus (actually, many functioning PCs still are!). Point is, once you've attained 24-bit color capability and speedy processing times — in other words, reached parity — where do you go? Now for the PC it's just a question of market base and a huge, esoteric selection of software and hardware. If you want to do your taxes on computer, buy a PC. If you want to do desktop video, buy either a PC or Amiga. But don't unduly knock the Amiga. The Toaster far and away is the best selling, best supported DTV card in existence. After all, what video board for the PC or Mac has its own friggin' magazine? Amazing, when you think about it. Ironically, too, Amiga software generally remains cheaper despite widespread pricing wars over in the land of Intel. I almost think that if the Amiga market had swiped a hint from Apple and started pricing its productivity stuff ten times higher, it would have attained a greater patina of respectability. I told a PC guy the other day (mind you, I'm a "PC guy" too what with my two 386 boxes) that the Amiga was the first desktop system: * to do process color for DTP * to import video and to process/switch video on-line * to offer 2-D, then 3-D modeling and animation * to provide image processing utilities (Pixmate, Butcher and Deluxe Photolab) * to morph * to multitask competing operating systems He wouldn't hear of it. Of course you can do all that stuff today on PCs, more or less. But the point is that you can do it on today's Amigas, too, in some cases still cheaper if not better and in other cases still better. Unfortunately, computer history already is well along in the process of politically correct revisionism.