Argus wrote:
Jim if you are reading this, please don't shut down the shop. You should sign up on EAB or one of the other sites.
I just read that entire thread. Frak that. He should just come back here. He, as well as myself and a lot of others on here, were here before the "Great Crash" when Amiga.org got a new server software. I've known him on here for 10 years now.
I've never had a problem with Jim and quite frankly, I'm irritated at how some of the people acted about it, including him. Yes, his comment could have been "out of line" to some, but it just got out of hand. It really was like a bunch of children in the playground.
You want to talk about exorbitant pricing?!?? How about the ridiculous pricing of AmigaOnes, or the Micro-A1 or even the SAM440? So, it's okay if a commercial business jacks up prices to "make ends meat" on sometimes "dated" hardware, but if a single individual does it, you shred him to pieces? :roll:
Eyetech could have dropped the price of the A-One board to 500$, even as buggy as it was and probably sold *TWICE* what they did. Fact of the matter is, people couldn't afford it and many, after dealing with all the problems, didn't want to. There's no way to make a living as a business in the Amiga Market. For too long, it's been mired by negligent management, high prices and ignorant decisions.
Spend 700$ for a sub-par "embedded market" board, just so I could run AmigaOS4.1? No thank you. Hell, even the Efika had a better price point. With an Efika and MorphOS2.0, it's still less than a SAM. Sure it only had 128MB of ram, but it was *CHEAP*.
Microsoft was selling the X-Box at a loss. They made up for it, eventually. Had Eyetech and even A-Cube sold the boards, at a loss, for the purpose of boosting the market, guess what?? They would have made money, eventually.
But, they didn't see it that way. What they saw was people who wanted new hardware, but didn't want to pay their prices for it, as it's a hobby machine. I don't have the luxury of spending 700$ on a hobby machine. I can use that money for a much better purpose, such as investments. All these companies want an immediate return and that's not how it works in this community.
Why do you think so many "Amigans" hate and despise Amiga, Inc. so much? They're criminals and horrible businessmen. They bought the Amiga, for name only, which was a mistake and in doing so, they ostracized the community. We told them what we wanted, just like we did with Eyetech and Hyperion, but what did they do? They went the opposite direction.
And failed....miserably. ;-)
Most of us groaned when we saw the specs for the AmigaOne. It wasn't what we wanted, nor what we asked for. They were concerned about "piracy" of the AmigaOS (but I won't even get started on the coupon voucher scam....), but that's 'cos we all wanted X86, not PPC and they couldn't protect their "intellectual property" on that platform, nor did they want to support all the hardware. Then again, how many of you are running OS4 or higher on your Classics, but you can't use a lot of your hardware, 'cos the developers never bothered to write code to support your Fastlane, or DKB3128 or whatever?
Jim did a lot to provide limited hardware, that was no longer being produced, to the community. He wants to charge high prices for it, that's his decision, but never once did I ever hear anyone complain about his products, nor his services. In fact, I've seen him more often than not, helping other people on the forums with problems they're having with their Amigas, PCs or Macs, if he had knowledge that would have helped them out.
So, thank you for ignoring the concepts of ROE, egging on a fight that didn't need to be and causing a valued member of the community to walk away from us. Thank God, we have people here, like you. :roll:
