I kind of agree and disagree.
It
is underpowered for quite a lot of tasks, but only those it's not meant for - i.e. CPU heavy ones. If you buy
any Amigaoid system for stuff like rendering these days, you must be a bit crazy as we just don't have (or in AROS's case can't harness) the power needed. PC's have oodles of power and have done for a long time now, but that doesn`t mean that we have to do the same things as them.
It just annoys me rather that people who've never used a Sam come on and tell everyone how underpowered they are, when I know that they're perfectly capable doing a lot. I know this because I actually
use one.
For instance, on my Sam:
I'm writing this now using OWB.
I develop software such as Catweasel drivers. Heck, I even ported SDLMAME using the Sam! I used the A1 for the final optimised compilation, but for the porting I used the Sam.
I emulate other machines.
I play the occasional game.
I don't:
try to render stuff
try to play HTML5 YouTube videos (MUCH more CPU intensive than people realise. It's only because things like phones and PCs have dedicated hardware and things that make people think it's not - we don't have those drivers so it's all down to CPU grunt for us, not for them).
try to run MAME
(It's
very CPU intensive). Having said that, it can run some games quite well.
try to run Timberwolf (it's not finished and there's no optimisation, so it's too slow - but that's not the Sam's fault).
Stick to what it's good at and it's a beautiful machine. Forget PC's - they're a different beast. Don't try and keep up with PCs because you won't win - they have a massive userbase and masses of technological evolution, we don't. Take the Amiga (and the Sam) on its merits rather than looking at your neighbour's PC, and you'll be happy. If you want PC power - you need to buy a PC, there's no way round that.
As for the price... seriously, these guys have to eat. They have families to feed. How can they be expected to produce low volume hardware at much cheaper prices? There's a lot of work gone into the R&D of the boards, of the production of the boards, of the investment risk in the first place. These guys
deserve money, and really 550 Euros for a complete system is a bargain when you factor in all the costs. We're not talking about big companies with huge economies of scale here.
However, I completely agree that hobbies
are expensive and they don't need to be sane. I know this because I own a CS-PPC.
We're very lucky that we're part of a hobby that still has commercial companies doing anything for us at all. It's not like we're a huge market. And then when they actually want some financial reward for their work and risk, people complain as though they should be doing everything for free.
Acube with their products aren't trying to build machines for power users - just use a PC for that. They're building hobbyist products for a hobbyist audience. I hate to say it but the only way the brand "Amiga" is ever going to be big again is if C=USA make it big and just stuff the label on a standard PC (and that makes me sad *sniff*). The Amiga as we know it cannot possibly compete with the technological advancement rate and the huge multi-billion dollar budgets of the PC world.