Rather than dividing the camp into two, it should be divided into three separate, but compatible, divisions. There are the home owners who, ideally, would want a machine for writing the odd letter, playing games, and just possibly surfing the net. There is the user that really requires a speed demon of a machine for rendering and other processor-intensive tasks, and then there is the creative professional - the person that needs the speed for processor-intensive tasks, but also requires their machine to be plugged into the world.

For these three distinct groups I propose the following machines:

• For the home user: A machine, similar to Apple's new-ish home machines that have a separate keyboard attached to a monitor/CPU box. This box, in the Amiga's case, will be a TV/monitor set. The screen would sit above a CD-ROM and floppy drive and front connectors for mouse and keyboard. The unit would have a TV tuner built-in for television viewing, but also one or two Zorro (or whatever takes the place of Zorro) slots. Memory, hard drive and CPU upgrades and the addition of certain peripherals would require callout of an engineer or a return to the dealer for installation, making this Amiga suitable for even the most computer illiterate. However, the machine would, within limits, be as upgradable as the next Amiga.

• For the serious user: A tower (or desktop) machine with several slots, easy user upgradability and enough space on the standard-shaped motherboard for large amounts of RAM and an easy processor upgrade.

• For the creative professional: As above, but this time with a slightly altered motherboard optimised for the machine's use as a multimedia authoring platform. Connections such as Firewire should be standard and there should be A/V ports on the back and front of the machine to allow for the connection of realtime video and sound grabbers, something like the V/Lab Motion, but integrated possibly with the Toccata.

All three of these proposed machines would use the same internal expansion cards (or at least the ones used on the most powerful machines should be backwardly compatible with lowlier versions) which will make things cheaper for developers since they will only need to make one version of their cards. As for graphics power, well, if feasible, the home machine's monitor should be able to handle 31kHz VGA-type modes for productivity, but I see no current need (especially given cost considerations) for more than 8-bit graphics performance with HAM modes as an added extra should it prove feasible. Based on current street prices for parts, I see no reason why a low-end Amiga such as the one I have painted a picture of shouldn't retail for somewhere around the �400-mark, plus a bit for CD-ROM and more memory as standard - current A1200 pricing. The mid-range machine, I see as selling for around �700, but remember that there would be no monitor included in this price, while the top of the range multimedia machine would sell for maybe �1300 without the cards for video and audio or a monitor. I truly believe that I am not just shooting in the wind with these price points and I think that having a range like this would satisfy everyone's needs and open the way for a whole wealth of different application streams.

A lot of people that are also familiar with Apple's way of setting their machine's at different pricepoints would be correct in assuming that I have taken inspiration from their methods, but then, the methods that suit the Mac will almost certainly suit the Amiga too, given the opportunity. NetScape recently announced that they were looking at the platforms they don't support to see if they should port their browser over to them and the Amig's name came top of the list. Unfortunately, I don't believe that Navigator for the Amiga would currently be a success. Why? Because the hardware we are all currently using is at least five years out of date. Without major upgrades, big players like Adobe, NetScape, Lotus and the like (oh all right, you can include Microsoft), won't be able to port their applications onto our platform, whether they want to or not.