1) I think Barry has given a fair and balanced interview. He is being pretty honest here IMHO and is hiding nothing here save any legal trade agreements they have with their business partners AFAIK….
He failed to answer some key questions, and his rebuke in each case was childish and unprofessional but evasive in those instances.
2) He is being realistic about the market situation and for the company in general - that for a reborn Commodore to survive, it has to make products that are relevant to the market and on-par tech wise with the best that is out there. Being Linux and Windows-compatible is one way to secure that future (or at least the funds for that future). Though not agreeing with 'legacy Amiga purists' going the x86 route now is the most logically sound route for the company at present.
We stated the bare minimum was for something akin to the effort put into C64x. A freely engraved case purchased from Wesena China is not remotely anything Amiga related and the i7 based motherboard is AROS incompatible.
Commodore OS is a complete joke. Linux and ugly skin is nothing to do with any Amiga OS. If it can't run Amiga source code natively with zero emulation as Amithlon or AROS do on x86 hardware is certainly isn't anything remotely related to the Amiga.
3) Had made some points which are very logical from a business perspective (which again may upset some Amiga fans here) but is the truth. Computers have come a long way since the Amiga days of producing customized chips, and the parts today are pretty much commoditized. To go against what the general market wants is financial suicide.
The only thing Mr BS is doing is pointing out he has nothing more than an AROS incompatible Linux box with a licensed Amiga logo engraved for free on Wesena HTPC mini ITX cases.
We don't want to buy such a machine which has nothing to do with Amiga in any way at all from any possible perspective anyone who ever used/owned/wanted an Amiga will have.
Even MorphOS, OS4 and AROS boxes aren't technically Amiga machines just a development to allow AHI/RTG system software to run without actual UAE/WinUAE emulation.
4) interesting points have been made in regards to how 'he sees' the Amiga brand, namely that it is a performance brand, and the old ideas were simply 'a concept'. In this day and age somehow he is right about it I feel….you don't see people using customized chipsets anymore save retro sites like A.org…..
His Amiga Mini has zero expansion capabilities and very sub standard graphics horsepower. So if we are going to talk about conceptual re-imagining of a machine then this 100% reliance on the fast i7 CPU to make up for lack of graphical hardware acceleration of the low end GPU on the motherboard (and no space to add a $400 PCI-E graphics card in that case) then what he has created is a virtual Atari Mega ST at best.
Like we said HTPC forces you to use on board sub optimal GPU in the machine's casing and this leads to a PC that will be basically the same as an off the shelf $400 PC performance wise. If he had thought this out better he would have chosen AMD technology with superior GPU performance built into the CPU cores on a single chip. Or of course built an A1000/A3000 case and allowed room for people to put extremely powerful graphics cards in such machines. As it stands the technical limitations of the Amiga Mini computer make it suitable only for little teenage girls who spend all day on Windows Live Messenger or Facebook or Youtube and may run a copy of Barbie and Ken. Your Amiga Mini will not even run the 2005 game of the year Battlefield 2. Your specs, CPU aside, are actually circa 2003
ergo everything he said was a load of BS and this is because all he can afford to do is sell rubbish HTPC machines for excessively high price with a free engraving service to make the most of uncle Bill's license to use the brand!
To be fair, after looking at the answers after his reply, I think the Amiga community in general I think is being too harsh on his company, and being too pessimistic about certain things a little too early. He has said he is a small company slowly working to rebuild the Commodore and Amiga brands. As Leo has mentioned many times before Rome wasn't built in a day…..
CUSA I believe is doing things right - it's not doing anything 'wrong' except maybe have slightly more expensive offerings in some product lines to Apple? But even then it's coming down cheap.
I just heard they launched the new Vic Mini the other day….and that's a completely new product to the last one (which I remembered was similar to the Amiga Mini)….
We are not being harsh, the only bad mouthed delusional people around this place are the secret C=USA groupies that hang round here lately.
Their cases are badly chosen, the design nothing to do with Amiga case designs any time between 1985 and 1994, the limited expandibility of chosen cases embarrassing (no chance of PCI cards in there), their motherboard choice is not even compatible with AROS.
So you tell me, how is anything he has done not anything I couldn't have done in an afternoons work? And we are supposed to be interested?
The gospel of B[ull]S[hit] is not worshipped here. And his groupies (or him in disguise) coming here and insulting people will not help his cause.
1. Amigans wouldn't use the Amiga Mini for a doorstop.
2. Regular Joe Public would not pay the price for that, rather an ASUS EEE PC
My take on this is that the C64x was a commercial disaster for him due to the bespoke case and custom keyboard and now his anger and lack of available cash has forced him to selotape an Amiga logo on an unsuitable chinese HTPC computer and he is angry this will also be a failure.
Had he bothered to make even just an A500/1200 style case and use a standard PC full size keyboard in there and sold those two parts together at a reasonable price he may have a viable business. As it stands OTHER people will do a better job than him of this and it may be that this is all people are interested in due to the need to have suitable business contacts to produce such esoteric items today in a world of Dell/ASUS PCs for peanuts at PC World.
Amiga Mini is neither
1. Unique looking.
2. Unique in hardware under the case.
3. Unique in ability to run Amiga related OS like AROS
4. Keenly priced
5. Anything that people who have two hands couldn't build for half the price identically
RIP C=USA. I give them 12 months before the whole thing shuts down due to bad management and product selection giving rise to death of his business.
My advice to them, and this is coming from someone who has sold over 2000 computers to earn my living before I have any more business lessons lol, is to discount the C64x and start promoting it.
Lack of 9 pin joystick to USB adaptors aside it is the only product they have which is remotely saleable and the only issue potentially interested parties have is the price. So drop the price by 40% and they might stave off bankruptcy.
