New Article!
Well, nobody promised Amiga users an easy ride and they (the doomsayers)
have been having a field day with our rapidly dwindling bunch of people
still actively using their
machines. As the old Chinese curse said, "May you live in interesting
times" and it has been interesting with a vengeance!
The news (as always?) has been bad .... and this could be misconstrued as well. Let me explain ... Jim Collas vanished from the scene, left or pushed. This has been the subject of rumours. The new President ,issued a public letter to the Community which muddied the waters still further ... will we or won't we get a new machine? He then issued a follow-up letter explaining that Amiga was concentrating on software only and that the MCC plans were unrealistic and were scrapped! Now, this didn't go down too well, especially with yours truly, who had set his little heart on a brand spanking new state of the art machine. Still following this ?
The picture become ever muddier with letter writers jumping in and stating
that ,overall, nothing has changed e.g. Amiga had always said it
was making the software only and would
only provide reference specs for a machine. However, having listened
to the Collas speech first hand at WOA, I came away thinking that
the MCC was on track, we had a kick ass processor lined up, major software
companies signed up and the future looked exceedingly rosy! Shows
how wrong you can be.
Understanably, all this combined to shake my faith in the future and I looked seriously into getting a Gates Crate! Lets be honest here and look at the facts. Yes, my amiga does most of what I want, but, it doesn't keep up with the latest trends! It isn't fast, its very expensive to add hardware to and the hardware still won't allow me to run the latest software about ,hardly surprising when you consider that the vast majority are M$ only.
I want to be able to add peripherals cheaply and easily, an A4 scanner
springs to mind here as well as CD-writers huge hard drives DVD etc.
They can be added to Amiga, but we're
talking serious money here and major upgrades such as tower and graphics
card .I could buy a scanner for £50 for P.C. and graphics card for
even less!!!
As well as the fact that Internet Banking seems seriously curtailed
if you are not using a P.C.. Shockwave pages, RAM radio, Quicktime 4 and
others, the list grows every day.
So, was there any point in continuing?
I looked at all my Gates Crate owning friends and soon discovered that
not one of them would actually praise their super fast ,infinitely
cheaper machines. Their software was
expensive, bug ridden and generally wouldn't allow them to do things
as easily or intuitively as mine. It screwed up frequently, losing setups
and hardware ... and every time they loaded
a new game gave them major grief!! This is the machine I was thinking
about moving to? I decided against it at present ,but it does remain a
valid option if things don't turn out well. Now ,for the good news!
Another reason I decided against the move was all the other happenings. IBrowse 2 came out. This is my Browser of choice and I was highly delighted to see it arrive. More about IBrowse can be seen elsewhere in the mag. Voyager was also updated and all the browsers are slowly catching up with the latest trends e.g. Javascript and shockwave (just to name a couple) Workbench 3.5 should be with us by the time you read this. So, another upgrade to buy :) Coupled with the software gradually coming out and the continuing march of other software packages like Pagestream showed that the platform isn't dead but is still limping badly. On the hardware front, we are going to be spoiled for choice! Even if there is no MCC (and there are rumours that the cancellation of MMC is a smokescreen to stop rival companies getting in first), we have the Boxer which has made its debut at long last!
We also have the promises from Phase 5 of AmiRage and the advent of
G4 accelerator boards and lastly, we also have the IWin machine. The IWin
machine has been cloaked in controversy as well, with the community (depending
on who you read) branding it a hoax or the saviour. This has been written
on a wet day at the end of September (we have a lead time as well as
the print magazines) and hopefully, by the time you read this, all
should be clearer. If all comes true, you should be able to buy the fabled
Boxer, G4, and Iwin.
If not, I'll be back in the depths of despair, hoping against hope,
that Amiga were simply hiding their new product from rivals ( as
when Amiga first came out).
Another thing to consider is the news from Amiga that they will help
anyone to provide the next generation machine. So, as I said, interesting
times!
Lets hope that we will be poking fun at this article in the not too distant future.