🚀 go-pugleaf

>I think that this is great news!  To be perfectly honest, Escom was killing
>the Amiga.  When reading the article in the latest Amazing Computing, I was
>sickend by the fact that Petro Tyschtschenko stated that if the $2700 price
>tag on the Amiga was lowered that no more Amigas would be sold.  What a
>crock.  There are three people I know including myself that refuse to buy a
>new Amiga because of the high price.  If you have seen the quality of the
>new Amigas you would puke.  They are almost the worst quality computer I
>have ever seen.

>What I am saying is chances are it is not going to get any worse.

>Kenton Groombridge
>kgroombr@hereford.ampr.org


Are you kidding?  Escom was the best thing to happen to the Amiga since
it was acquired by Commodore!  Not only did they start production of
existing machines, they started reestablishing a worldwide dealer
network, as well as restarting R&D.  Most important of all, they gave
DIRECTION to what had been a floundering platform for the last 5+ years.

EVERYTHING Escom has done was done from a strict business perspective --
the choice of PPC over DEC & HP; design of the "Walker" towards standard
hardware; NOT jumping headlong into the US market; the sale of AT...
As far as the $2,700 price goes...do you have ANY IDEA the COST of all
those proprietary components?  (Floppy drives, chips, DB-23 connectors,
etc.)  Consider that Escom was probably the ONLY CUSTOMER IN THE WORLD
for most of that.

Understand that Escom had just posted a big quarterly loss.  Much of that
was from their purchase of Commodore & the Amiga.  Poorer than expected
holiday sales were what probably cost Manfred Schmitt his job.

Read Businessweek sometime.  When a company CEO is replaced it is because
the Board wants ACTION NOW.  (Look at Apple.)  Helmut Jost had to do
something visible and had to do it immediately or risk following Schmitt.
Buying Commodore cost Escom about $15 million; they probably put about
another $15 million into getting everything up and running.  Now, along
comes an opportunity to sell the division responsible for most of the
capital outlay -- at a nice profit AND they keep the valuable (in Europe)
Commodore name & trademarks.  It's a big win situation for Jost & Escom.

Now, VIScorp not only gets unhindered access to the stuff they need
(AmigaDOS and chips) they also get a fully-functional R&D team, rights
to sell systems without having to DO anything (manufacturing, distribution
and sales networks are ALREADY IN PLACE in Europe).

If it's handled rightly, this could be the best move for the Amiga to
date.

What I think should be the first move of VIScorp is to kill R&D for new
Amiga hardware.

[I can hear the cries of outrage already.  Hear me out.]

The Walker was the best move I've seen in a long time.  Except for the
AGA chipset, it moved firmly towards PC common components (read CHEAP &
PLENTIFUL).  Amiga HD floppies cost $130 -- a similar PC one is $30.  A
32-bit SVGA card with 2 Mb of RAM [PCI bus] is under $75.  The equivalent
for and Amiga?  Around $500.  Same damn chips on the card, too.

By stopping research on hardware and dumping the money & efforts into
porting AmigaDOS to PPC (CHRP/PREP) they could do wonders.  After all,
AmigaDOS is the only reason I still use an Amiga.  For $2,700 I can get
(and have gotten) a PC with hardware that makes an A4000T look like
somebody's discarded calculator.  [Read Dave Haynie's IRC session.]
The problem is the 200-pound gorilla called "Windows" on the back of the
system.  BLOATED is the nicest term I can think of.  As a result, all the
PC software has that same BLOATED feel.  Can you imagine the POWER of
a system like today's top-of-the-line PCs with AmigaDOS?  Where you don't
need 8 Mb of RAM to run the OS?

Anyway, this is getting too long.  Give VIScorp a chance.  AT looks like
it is being sold "intact" (though I can't find their web page anymore).
Let's see what they do.

Charles Hill
chill@magicnet.net