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Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 3.9 KB

Path: cs.uwa.edu.au!jasonb
From: [e-mail] (Jason S Birch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: A4000 HD Drive, FORGET IT!
Date: 10 Jan 96 03:58:42 GMT
Organization: The University of Western Australia
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[e-mail] (Chris Hall) writes:
>Your forgetting one thing. The price of Zip media would cause a $15 or
>more hike in the price of Amiga software. Zips are cheap for user storage
>but for a developer who is looking at shipping thousands of packages, the
>costs would add up quickly. It's better for them to ship on CD because
>it's less than a $1 for each copy of a CD done in bulk. 100MB Zips in bulk
>in would still cost them over $10, 25MB ones would probably be just over $5.
>That's why I think that Amigas should be shipped with hard drives and
>CDROM drives, then the user could buy any backup device they want.

Only one problem with this - how cheap is a low-end machine with both
hard drive and CDROM going to be?

For things like games to be distributed on any particular medium, the
low end is going to have to use it. The trouble with using Zip in the
low end is, as you say, the cost of the medium. Sure, the drives are
cheap, but the cost of the disks is at least five times as much as a
CD (assuming 25M) with only 4% the storage, and duplication of Zip
disks would be much harder (I imagine the same process as with
floppies) than CDROMs (stamped from a master). So, for software
distribution, CDROM is a big win over Zip cost-wise. However, CDROM
isn't much use for a low-end *computer* (I don't think it can compete
as a games console, so it needs to be seen as a computer) without any
other means of storing information - therefore you also need either a
floppy or a hard drive. A hard drive is way too expensive in addition
to a CDROM for the low end, and doesn't solve the problem that users
won't actually be able to exchange files without a network! But, if
there's a floppy drive, then (a) the system is still quite expensive,
and (b) CDROM is no longer the only medium for low-end distribution,
the floppy disk is there as well - and, for distributions requiring
less than 3-4 disks, it's still cheaper to use a floppy than a CD.

So, we're back where we started. Zip seems like the perfect
replacement for HD and floppy, until you look at how expensive it is
to distribute software on compared to CDROM. CDROM alone, however,
doesn't give you the big advantage of the others, which is writeable
storage. Any combination of the four options then becomes expensive,
and various combinations have various problems.

My solution? Well, it seems to me that what's important is keeping the
*initial* cost of the system down so that people will buy it. Once
they've bought it, they tend to find all sorts of excuses to upgrade
it. :-) Also, from the software distribution point of view, CDROM is
the most cost effective and well established. Therefore, the machine
should have a CDROM drive bundled *but* also make expansion with HD,
floppy drive, or Zip, painless. I suppose the easiest way to do this
is include a SCSI interface (which you could also use for the CDROM).
The only problem compatibility-wise, I guess, is that I don't think
any SCSI floppy drives can read Amiga disks - but that should be less
important as time goes on.

>Chris Hall

--
Jason S Birch                        ,-_|\ email: [e-mail]
Department of Computer Science      /     \ Tel (work): [phone]
The University of Western Australia *_.-._/ Fax (work): [phone]
Nedlands  W. Australia  6907             v  Tel (home): [phone]