#NEWTEK SPEAKS
13 messages in this thread
MR JOHNSON! I AM NOT A FRIEND OF THE VIDEO TOASTER, I, AND A USER BASE
OF AROUND 16 MILLION AMIGA OWNERS IN EUROPE CAN NOT USE THE DAMN THING,
UNTIL YOUR TECH TEAMS COME UP WITH A PAL, I SAY AGAIN *P*A*L* TOASTER!
PLEASE PASS ON A MESSAGE TO MR JENISON, THE POTENTIAL SALES IN THE
EUROPEAN MARKET ARE ENORMOUS, IF HE IS TOO BLIND TO SEE THIS PERHAPS
THERE IS A VACANCY IN THE COMMODORE LEAGUE OF COMPANYS WHICH "FAILED TO
LOOK FORWARD" COMMODORE RESTED ON ITS LAURELS WITH A BRILLIANT PRODUCT
AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED, LASTLY TO REINFORCE THE MESSAGE…
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE GENTLEMEN!
WE NEED A 50HZ PAL TOASTER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!
WHO WAS IT SAID "WHEN ONE CUSTOMER WRITES TO COMPLAIN HE/SHE REPRESENTS A
THOUSAND WHO WANTED TO BUT NEVER GO ROUND TO IT!"
Thankyou anyway for at least not deserting the Userbase completely!
STARFIRE cruising the stratosphere
MOTOROLA 040 and AUTOPILOT ENGAGED!
Gee, suddenly you've multiplied the total number of Amigas ever made by 4 and
shipped them all to Europe. Good trick.
No he didn't.
Each Amiga in Europe is operated by 4 people a day for 6 hours each. <g>
Wrong again,
Each person in Europe is operated by 4 Amigas :^)
Paul,
I can see good reason for you to get angry but if you are going to argue
it would help if some of your figures were at least ball park. The
potential user base in Europe (ie. 2000's, 3000's or 4000's) is probably
more than 200 times less than your figure of 16 million.
I live in the UK own 2 A2000's and 1 A4000/040 which are used in my line
of work. I too would like to see a PAL toaster but I doubt if 16 million
Amigas have ever been made.
Greg
16 million Amigas is indeed pure bunkum… The last figure I heard was
something like 3.5 million worldwide.
The bulk of the UK 'installed base' is A500's, 600's & 1200's,, I don't
know about Germany but I imagine its the same and Paul, I hate to be the
one to tell you but the Toaster won't work on a machine that has no
slots….
As an owner of 7 A3000's and 1 A4000 I'm probably Commodore UK's biggest
customer !
Here's an interesting little tale about the European market:
I received Wordworth 3 yesterday and was most annoyed to find the
Postscript module had not been included. This made the program useless for
me so I called Digita tech support and they told me that because of the
pressure to get this program on the shelves something had to be left out
and as only 4 people said on their previous Wordworth registrations that
they used Postscript (out of 20,000 returned reg cards) they decided that
Postscript was not important enough to delay shipping.
Andrew.
Hi Andrew,
I know about WordWorth III, I'm one of the other 4! I've got a HP Lazerjet
4ML, so although version 3 is installed on my PA's machine she is still
using version 2.
Reading your message again, did you mean to send your reply to me or Paul?
BTW, what so you use all your Amigas for? The A4000 is for the MIDI side
of my recording studio and the A2000's are for our PA and secretary and my
wife's business (shes's a musician).
I think there is a little more than 3.5 million Amigas worldwide, there
are about 2.8 million in the UK and Germany alone. At a guess I'd say 4-5
million.
Greg
I emailed Digita a couple of weeks back about ARexx support which they
stated was going to be in release 3. They said that they had insufficient
response to warrant its inclusion and that not many of their users even
knew what it was. Currently Arexx has less priority than landscape
printing and style sheets.
I don't blame Digita, they know what their potential customers want and it
isn't what I want. But as you indicate it does say a lot about the
European … unfortunately.
martin
wetherby yorkshire
Oh yes! They are all in Mr. Gould's garage in boxes on the top shelf… you
know, the shelf above the document crates?
"COMMODORE RESTED ON ITS LAURELS WITH A BRILLIANT PRODUCT
AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED, LASTLY TO REINFORCE THE MESSAGE…"
I basically agree with this statement, but there are some things to
remember.
1) NTSC Toaster sales are very good. Without maintaining good American
sales, the market for and surrounding the Toaster is likely to vanish. So
they will plug away with the Flyer, ScreamerNet and other integrated
projects for the American market, and enter the PAL market when they can
afford to redesign the Toaster..
1b) Commodore's actions may appear to be _similar_ to Newtek's, but in
fact they are the _opposite_. NewTek is going after the largest, most
talented market (America). Note that being the most popular platform in
Europe did not produce much usable applications software; Very little, in
fact, given the market size over there. It is no secret that America is
still the most active and competitive developer market (esp. with regards
to software), with many more programmers per capita than anywhere else. If
the Amiga's Euro-market share had been aquired in the U.S. & Canada
instead, we would be swimming in applications software and that is a fact;
You simply would not be able to keep the developers off your doorstep.
2) A whole market of software and hardware products that have been made
or come to rely on the Toaster now exists. Almost all of it relies on the
NTSC format. This 3rd-party support for the Toaster is so robust, it truly
sets it apart from even the Toaster-like products costing 10x more. If the
Toaster had started as a PAL product instead, the situation would be very
different right now.
3) NewTek's DTV products (not Digiview 🙂 are integrated. Commodore,
however, can't even keep CDTV/CD32 compatible with the Amiga line (which
fragmented their market, deprived Amiga users of full CDTV compatability,
and drove potential developers away who would have written CDROM software
for a market that also _included_ the 3-4million Amigas).
4) Europeans using the Amiga/Toaster in NTSC mode w/transcoder will
benefit from the _large_ array of existing Toaster support products
developed in America, and the existing Toaster developers will benefit
from a larger userbase and not having to face porting their products to
PAL.
5) Aside from software talent, Hollywood is also the biggest part of the
NTSC market (yeah, I know.. I distrust Hollywood, too, but…..). So
there is the artistic talent and motivation to consider also. While
Europe has lots of TV talent, the TV-addicted American market is bursting
at the seams.
-Chris
Just one of those little points…. Europe *is* "swimming in software",
but it's games software – there are a large number of highly productive
developers over there all right, but they are focused where the major
market for Europe is (regarding the Amiga)… games.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Thanks for not shouting. *B^)
NewTek has a co-operative agreement with Prime Image to jointly pursue the
PAL market. Prime Image makes a card which converts NTSC into PAL.
-= Vance =- Image Master
Flying high on Imagine and Imagemaster R/t!
Whoa! I agree and sympathise with you completely! However, I am NOT an
employee of NewTek (though I wish I was!), and my company, ReAnimators, is not
affiliated in any way with NewTek. I'm sure the folks in Kansas want a PAL
Toaster as much as you…
Trent Johnson ReAnimators