The $500 000 Question: How much is Amiga *worth*?

[deBrun]

I think Amiga could come back like Apple has if they get the money and brains to market/advertise (whatever they choose) with unwavering dedication, determination and grit (you know like a pitbull latches onto a steak type attitude)

Like for instance:

I wonder why this video/similar isn't EVERYWHERE?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4041270341638854546&q=amiga+os&hl=en

Stuff like the above should be an embedded vid on websites.  Its easy and cheap. Before some of you say poo, remember its the hustle that counts & I think that's how MS won in the first  place (sure as hell wasn't their product...)

[thedaemon]

Just to shed some light on my point of view (very new to amiga). I stumbled onto amiga by references to dpaint. i really enjoy pixel art, anyways. I am quite surprised by how expandable, and upgradeable an amiga is. you can still make them a decently fast machine, and they haven't been in production in years. one of the main reasons i bought my 4000D was to get back to the basic of hardware/programming. that and I love to fiddle with computers. to me, amiga OS is similar to BeOS, which I loved. with the way computers are heading this day, a small affordable "media pc" would be the way to go to get amiga out there. of course this is a newbie current opinion, and should probably be taken lightly. if there were more people interested in actual computers and not just using them for mudane tasks, the amiga scene would be much larger.
my 2 1/2 cents

[stopthegop]

if there were more people interested in actual computers and not just using them for mudane tasks, the amiga scene would be much larger.

I agree.  Unfortunately the herds of sheeple seem to prefer mundane tasks to ones which require a cerebrol cortex.    

[snowman040]

I agree.  Unfortunately the herds of sheeple seem to prefer mundane tasks to ones which require a cerebrol cortex.    

Please stop mixing "I like" with "market value", Amiga from 1984 will never happen again. Back in 80's one-man company could make the change in computer market, today it's simply not possible.

[Dandy]

neon32 wrote:
But it's not really 12-14 year old technology. In my opinion it's only been since windows 2000 that even microsoft have really made any worthy progress beyond what Amiga OS offers as standard to the average user.

As far as I remember already Win95 came with integrated browser and TCP/IP - something the Amiga OS is lacking up to now...

[Dandy]

thedaemon wrote:
...
I am quite surprised by how expandable, and upgradeable an amiga is. you can still make them a decently fast machine, and they haven't been in production in years.
...

Yes - this is what still fascinates me as well, although I'm an Amigan already since 1989...

thedaemon wrote:
...
with the way computers are heading this day, a small affordable "media pc" would be the way to go to get amiga out there.
...

Thats exactly the way I'm feeling since about a year - there definitely is a need for such an item.

But it should be an real attractive alternative pricewise to what people use today for listening to music/mp3s, to watch movies, to surf the web and write some e-mails.

I mean - if the average user today buys a Wintel box, he is funding the development of things he himself has no use for, never favoured and would never spend a dime on.

The effect is that the users pay for things that just companies and professionals need - so these features just needed by companies and professionals can become cheaper for them.

If you can get millions of people to pay for things they do not need nor want but are included in the product anyway, then the product becomes cheaper as if just the few thousands who actually need these particular features bought the product.
(Writing this I had e.g. Windows's support for networking and multiuser or this DRM thingie in mind, which is not needed by the average user but by companies and professionals and bloats the code - at least from an "average user's" POV)

So the "average users" really could be better off (financially) if all the stuff that companies and professionals need was not included in the product.

So I would come to the conclusion that it would be better to split this product (OS) into (at least) two different products (one to satisfy the needs of companies and professionals and the other one to meet the needs of the "average users") than to have an "oviparous wool-milk-sow"-like product.

[Rudei]

@charliestu

(apart from when post-Commodore the brand name appeared in 1993-4 on Chelsea FC shirts before unfair stuffing in 1994 FA Cup Final

Erm, wasn't it 4-0?  If Chelsea had lost by one goal that was offside or something I could understand but 4-0 unfair?  You're having a laugh :-)

[neon32]

Dandy wrote:

As far as I remember already Win95 came with integrated browser and TCP/IP - something the Amiga OS is lacking up to now...

It's easy to talk about how important it is now to have a TCP-IP stack incorperated into the OS now that the internet has become such a big thing. Back in the early nineties the internet was nothing to what it is now. In a way you could consider it a fluke that the whole TCP-IP thing worked out, i'm pretty sure it wasn't expected or planned back then, if i remember correctly Bill Gates was quoted to saying that the internet is just a fad and people will get bored of it soon enough, so it's only because pc's where made to be used in offices and created so they could be networked together that they already had the features incorperated to allow the internet to develop the way it has.