April 1992 saw the release of the
Commodore Amiga A600. It's arrival in
the High Street shops was met with
mixed opinions. Here is a rather
interesting read of what one man
thought.
This is a review/opinion of the new
Amiga A600, but let's first take a
look at what Commodore have done as
far as the A500 is concerned. Because
of the failure of the A500 Plus, they
have decided to scrap the A500 range
all together, while we agree that the
"Plus" was a waste of time from the
start, Commodore seem to have
forgotten the 1,000,000 or more V1.3
Amiga Users out there who have
supported them for quite some time,
and brought Commodore in quite a lot
of money over the years since the
birth of tha Amiga A1000. Well I'm sorry, but in My view,
Commodore have made a grave mistake.
The Amiga V1.3 has now become a "Cult"
machine,very much like the
"V.W.Beetle" and as long as the parts
are available for "Amy" 1.3 it will
never go away, it will remain as a
reminder to Commodore of just what a
stupid mistake it was to think that
they could dictate to Amigan's all
over the world which machine they
should buy.
Anyway, let's have a look at the "New
Wonderful A600" (hahaha!). Here are
some of the draw backs; PRICE- £459:00 (Well I'm sorry, but in My view,
Commodore have made a grave mistake.
From Computer City).
This for the basic machine. Let's
have a look at this £459:00 package; It looks like a rather sad Amiga A500
or A500+, it's had it's end (numeric
keypad) chopped off and now looks
rather more like the C64. The main
board inside has "A300" stamped on it
so it looks as though Commodore
intended it to be something else
instead. The internal Disk Drive gets
so hot that I'm told it could very
well damage disks if they were left in
too long. There is no port at the
side, so you won't be able to use such
things as Scanners, hard drives,
side-car type up-grades etc. The memory is only expandable to 2
Megs. When you load Workbench, you
will find that there is only 504K left
to work with, and this is hardly
enough for a decent size letter. It
has an expansion slot into which you
can plug all the add-ons if and when
they become available. (If the A600
is a flop, then there won't be any
add-ons) My view is as follows: If You buy an
A600, it will cost between £450:00 and
£500:00 for the basic model, if you
bought the model with built in 20 Meg
Hard Drive, this would cost you about
£720:00 and having bought either of
these two, you would not have enough
memory to do a great deal with so you
would then need a Ram upgrade. The
Ram upgrade that will fit the A600 is
not like the ones that fit into the
A500;
3- The board on which it is built is only available from one Supplier, and Commodore have the EXCLUSIVE rights to this board I'm told so I would think that the price that it sells at will be quite high, let's say about £150:00, it could be more, but I don't think it will be less, if you can only get it from Commodore, why should it be...
So what have we got? An A600 at £450:00 and a Ram upgrade at £150:00 giving a total outlay of £600:00 for the Basic Model, or an A600 with 20 Meg Hard Drive at $720:00 and a Ram upgrade at £150 giving a total price of £870.00
So are you going to spend between £600.00 and £900.00 on a machine that will only run about 35% of programs available for the Amiga (just like the Plus) and that will probably not get much support from Software Houses and companies that make "Add-Ons" because there is every chance that the A600 will do even worse than the A500 Plus.
One other point that I have just noticed, the A570 CD Rom Drive won't work on the A600 either, so if You have one, then you will have to sell it (If You can) and buy an A670 Drive when Commodore make one.
FIRST, if you were one of the
unfortunate People that listened to
all the talk about the A500 Plus being
"The Best Amiga Yet", and as a result
you went out and bought one, then I
would think that you would have every
right to write to Mr.Kelly Sumner who
is Retail Product Sales Director for
the U.K. part of Commodore, and give
him a rather large piece of your mind.
The place you will have to send your
letter to is the same place as you
sent your warrenty card to, I don't
know of any other address. I would
suggest that you mark your letter for
the attention of Mr.Sumner, otherwise
you are wasting your time writing, I
have written to Commodore at that
address and as yet I have NEVER had a
reply. SECOND, If You are thinking of buying
an Amiga Computer in the near future,
make EVERY effort to get a V1.3
KICKSTART Model, you will probably be
told that "this model is no longer
available", but there are still some
about, I know of three places where
there are some left. If You can't get
a new one, then look in the Computer
Mags for a second hand one, make sure
it works OK before you buy it and then
you should have no problems, after
all, with over 1,000,000 other users
of this model in this Country alone
and millions more in other countries,
all companies who's products are aimed
at the Amiga part of the Home Computer
Market will, I would think be making
whatever it is for a long time to
come, as I said at the begining of
this article,the Amiga 1.3 has become
a "Cult" machine now (You can still
get parts for the V.W.Beetle, and that
came out in about 1934!) I have run out of things to say, I'm
sorry if I have gone on a bit, but I
feel strongly about the way in which
Commodore have treated Amigan's all
over the World, and I think it's about
time we stood up to be counted.