Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

EB1T 1
111. STATS
CeBit is one of the
world's largest computer
shows. The only
one bigger is perhaps
Comdex in America. A
ticket for a single day
-
about S39) on a the door and a ticket for all
seven days is double c that. The catalogue
on its own costs o 36DM and weighs in at
about 5-6Ibs. You s can throw away all but
a couple of ounces t of that, though, if you
have a suitable s machine equipped with a
CD-ROM because
5
you get one with all the
information contained in the book with
0
the catalogue.
D
CeBit takes place over seven days in 26
M
halls and has a total of 6,507 companies
from 66 different
(
countries exhibiting in a
total of 465,847 E square metres of display
space. 2
The showground 5 is so large that there
are bus services o operating to carry people
between halls r and there is parking for
over 50,000 cars at any one time.
There are hundreds of toilets, snack
bars and restaurants all over the show-
ground, so finding people can be a nightmare.
Fortunately for me, the people I
wanted to meet were all clustered around
the few Amiga-related stands, so it wasn't
too much of a problem. • ' 1111
Technologies hope to have something to show
this time next year. However, your loyal
reporter thinks that the new machine is far
from the perfect solution, When airs said and
done, it is still an Al200, admittedly faster and
with better expansion possibilities, but with no
real improvement on current (and by current I
really mean five year old) technology.
The backplane idea for adding Zorro slots is
a good one in principle, but it means additional
costs for the user who wants to upgrade his
machine. First he has to buy the baciiplane,
and how much will that cost? Then he has to
buy his expansion. If he decides to further
expand his machine, he'll have to get rid of his
original backplane and buy a larger one, all the
time ensuring the new card will have the slots
he needs for the cards he already has, and he'll
need to buy the spacer unit to make his
machine tall enough to take the new cards_
BENEFITS
In my humble opinion, it would have been
more beneficial to have room inside the
machine for two Zorro II/III cards and an in-line
video slot, In addition, the machine should
have had the same CPU slot as an A3000,
A4000 and so on so that the companies
remaining who support the Amiga don't have
their resources further stretched by having to
tool up for a third Amiga standard. For instance,
Phase 5 already make accelerators for the
Al200 and the A4000/3000. They are not
going to want to have to make a third type of
accelerator to satisfy Walker owners. I'm sure
they'll do it anyway, but it might mean the end
fl lome ga 's ne w ba by gia nts, the Ja r a nd D itto drive s.
We hope to re vie w the m soon
n SyQuast's SyJe t should
prove a ma jor compe titor
for the Ja r drive
In this globa l ma rke t,
compa nie s re a lly ought to
pay more a tte ntion to the
connota tions the ir
bame might ha ve in othe r
countrie s.-
of them. After all, it's not as though there are
thousands of existing Al200 or big box Amiga
owners out there who are suddenly going to
drop everything they own and switch to a
Walker.
Perhaps, rather than simply rearranging
everything in the case design and adding this
In fact the new Amiga launch was probably the most exciting
event at this year's CeBit, even though it probably interested less
than one per cent of the visitors to the show.
Purveyors of wares for other platforms were overheard
AMIGA COMPUTING
MAY 1 9
F IT FOR
AN AMIGA?
NI in all, the CeBit show doesn't really suit the
Amiga market. There are far too many extremely
serous people doing very grown up things on
machines that have probably never even had a
game of Tetris on them, and this small, ckfferent,
company doesn't really fit in Some companies
who were noticeable by their absence, however,
included MacroSystem, who, you would have
thought. would be in their element showing I:0
the Dram as a standalone video editing machine
at a fraction of the cost of a similar Avid set-up,
never mind the fact that it is Amiga-based And
Phase 5 were surprisingly not on the Motorola
booth showing off a potential prototype of the
PowerUp PowerPC accelerator card for the
NTiga
Even so, Haar & partners were on Motorola's
stand showing off Storm C14-t-, An ANSI compliant
C package with full support for Motorola's
060 and a GUI editor? Sounds too good to be
true? Well, unless you speak German, it is.
Translation is going ahead now for the manual,
but don't expect it to surface for a couple of
months, at least, in its English form.
r m not sure if I have correctly conveyed
just how fleets to attend CeBit, so I'S try again
Unless you have a fortune to spend and resenrahons
made, CeBit is like that favounte of Japanese
television shows- Endurance I realty do feel like
rve been put through the mil. Anyway, that's the
news from CeBit I'm off to soak my aching
feet for a few haws-
new bus, Amiga Technologies should have
done what they have always said they are
doing and build on the strengths of the Amiga.
Surely some form of video expansion like a
built-in genlock, or a sound sampler, would
have been of more immediate benefit to new
users and build on the Amiga's much-trumpeted
multimedia superiority.
A built-in sound sampler
would also mean that the
Amiga could get some form
of Internet phone access,
another string in the
Amiga's bow.
Then the surfer pack
could realty offer something
new. Just imagine the
scarce advertising: 'International
calls at a local rate -
they're yours with the
Amiga! Still, the machine I
saw was only a prototype
and there is plenty of time
for changes before its
selling period,
NOUGH AMIGA, WHAT ABOUT
OTHER PLATFORMS?
bemoaning the lack of interesting or new products, and several
visitors I spoke to also complained about a dearth of innovative
products. Still, I guess the new Amiga could be lumped in that
category too.