Viscorp has finally bought Amiga Technologies from Escom; hopefully they'll do a better job (much better, in fact) than Escom! In fact, it may have been a lucky escape, as I've just heard that Escom have gone bust...
They plan to use the AmigaOS/Chipset for their ED set-top interactive TV device, though whether they will produce Amigas themselves as desktop computers is as yet undecided. At first, they said they would leave it to licenced companies, but they've now changed their minds, apparently.
Talking about licencing, Viscorp are not too happy with Phase 5's and PIOS's plans to build their own Amigas, and want them to obtain a proper licence. I certainly hope their plans do go ahead; Phase 5 will release a PowerAmiga first half of next year, while PIOS intend to release a dual operating system machine as soon as September, with better machines to follow next year.
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<B>The Viscorp Campaign - The Viscorp Campaign - The Viscorp Campaign</B>
For those of you who read CU Amiga Magazine, you'll have seen their campaign to write to Viscorp and tell them what you think. I think this is a great idea; luckily CU Amiga provided a FREEPOST address, so get to it!:
Urgent! Save the Amiga!
CU Amiga/Marketing
Emap Images
FREEPOST LON7311
London
EC1B 1TL
I don't know how long this FREEPOST address stands. If you want to write direct to Viscorp, I have their address also:
Bill Buck
VIScorp
111 North Canal Street
Suite 933
Chicago
Illanois
60606USA
Do it <B>Now</B>! Tell them what you want them to do, such as licencing the Amiga, producing new machines, dropping A1200/A4000 prices, improving the OS/Chipset, and so on.
And if you have access to e-mail, why not send one to Phase 5 at aproject@phase5.de, giving your support for their PowerAmiga clone. (Sorry, I don't have Phase 5's address, or Viscorp's e-mail address!)
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<B>Other News</B>
<B>Final Writer 5 </B>has been released, including new features such as Autocorrect, Tables, ASL file requestors, Datatypes support, HTML support, RTF support, and so on.
<B>The Aminet </B>is now officially the world's biggest FTP site, with over 30,000 archives, totalling over 5 Gigabytes.
<B>Eagle Systems </B>are now producing Amigas, with prices ranging from #À800 for the A1200T, to #À2200 for the A4000T/060.
<B>Back to Viscorp</B>! There are rumours of them releasing a new AmigaOS very soon...
<B>Supra </B>have just released a 33 600 Modem, and supports CallerID, answerphone ability and voicemail.
<B>Power </B>are soon to be launching the Turbo1240 based around a 25MHz '040, for #À259, and a 40MHz '040 at #À329. These are, of course, cheap prices compared to the competition (the Apollo 1240 25MHz, for example, costs #À300).
