It's interesting that people are saying the AmigaOne has a better chance of success because it is an "official" Amiga product. Reputation (i.e., the name) may influence some consumers, but the name alone is not enough to make any product successful. Look at cases where a well-known brand was bought but the product didn't live up to its past standards (Fender guitars, Packard Bell, etc.). So I'm not sure how much of a factor that is outside of the already-convinced fans.
As far as corporate prospects are concerned, if you're concerned about future stability, Genesi is certainly in much better shape than Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion. They have income sources in other industries (airline security, as I understand it), and their product line looks like it could be pretty diverse. Watching how Bill Buck has money to throw at promotion and so on, it's hard to argue on this one.
As for the products themselves, it's impossible to say at this point. Everything is either unfinished or still in/just out of beta. I've never seen a Pegasos board up close, but people who have say it's a work of art. The pictures on the web give some hints of this. I'm sure once the bugs are wrung out, both boards will run pretty much any software available as fast and smooth as people need. Well, there've been comments about how this thing or that is broken, but most people won't push their boards hard enough to notice, from what I hear.
It'll be interesting to see what the Pegasos II is like, since it won't be using the Articia chip any more. I imagine there'll be more divergence as time goes on.
The question in my mind is what the next step is, software-wise. OK, both boards/OSs can run older Amiga apps in a kind of run-time environment. But how will native PPC software come along for each platform? Here Amiga has history on its side, but Genesi is much more proactive about getting developers on board, supporting user groups, and so on. So it'll be very interesting once people have these computers and start producing software for them.
It's interesting that a lot of Amigans, who generally think of themselves as independent thinkers, are now putting down these other "rebels" who've started up their own thing without the official blessing. I don't see much free thinking when people are definite about a product choice when they haven't even had their hands on either option.
-- gary_c
