Worst of the Worst Think Comodore has done.

[Matt_H]

They do not provide a amiga with a built in hard disk.

On the contrary, some 1200s and 600s, most later model 2000s, and nearly all 3000s and 4000s shipped with harddrives.

[Matt_H]

I'm afraid I still disagree. The A500 shipped in 1987. Hard drives were still  expensive and somewhat rare back then. It would have put the price outside the range of what people were willing to spend and therefore would have ruined much of the hobby market back then. A low price used to be a killer selling point for Amigas.

You may be on to something though. The way to compare would be to see if PCs from that era usually shipped with a hard drive.

[Matt_H]

Phew. A lot to address here.

@ Plaz

Yes, their PC division was a complete waste of resources. Not just the Colt project, the whole department. By the time they realized it, it was too late.

@ MarkTime

I think the CD32 would have saved Commodore if it had been marketed properly and if they had enough units to satisfy demand. True, it couldn't really compete with the Saturn and Playstation, but they didn't exist yet. If the machine's expansion slot had been used to potential, I think the machine would have been able to hold out. If the records are correct, the CD32 was a serious contender in Europe.

@ Rodney

I agree. The marketing department's main problem was that they pretty much only advertised to existing Amiga users. That's not a good way to expand the user base. Did any general computing publications from the early 1990s have Amiga adverts in them?

As for the A600, it would have been a great machine if:
1) They had socketed the 68000.
2) The marketing department had kept it as the uber-low-cost A300 as engineering had planned for it.

@ Atheist

I think putting an 020 in the 2000 would have been just as deadly to the cost as putting a hard drive in every unit. Besides, the 2000 is far easier to accelerate than the 500. PPC cards were even planned for the 2000 before phase5 went under. Also, had 020s been developed by 1987? I don't know.

I disagree with you on the bridgeslots. Mainstream compatibility was extremely important back then. My father used the only Amiga in his office with a 486 bridgeboard until the middle of the Win95 era. Full Novell network support, essentially 2 machines in one box, it was great. A bit like the Siamese system, only the Amiga was the host machine.

@ Acill

WordPerfect was definitely a step in the right direction. The problem was, once M$ killed it off on the PC, the Amiga version became redundant.



I want to cry when I think what could have been. :-(
AGA in 1991 would have turned a few heads.

[Matt_H]

They thought that the enemy was Atari and let pcs to become the top.. Very wrong move for Commodore, very wrong.. Now it's not easy to reach these pcs.....

See, that's the funny thing. I grew up around Amigas, I was always aware of the PC threat, but I never even knew that Atari had been a seriuos competitor at all until... say, a year ago?

[Matt_H]

The real A4000 (A3000+) was meant to be SCSI based have a internal Scan Doubler for Hires SVGA monitors,

Eh... I actually think the scan doubler component  was scrapped. Softhut got their hands on a 3000+ about a year or so ago, and I don't believe it had a scan doubler. I could be wrong though.