No tower for me :-(

[xyth]

Well I saved up, borrowed a credit card, and eagerly went to the Elbox Online Shop to purchase a Mirage 1200 w/keyboard interface (~170 Euro)...

...only to discover that it would actually cost me more than the tower itself to ship it here to NZ (~200 Euro).

No wonder there's so much software piracy here. We have to pay more than twice the price for hardware.

Guess I'll be sticking with sticking with the 1200DO (Desktop Octopus).

[xyth]

I've checked out a bunch of amiga dealers in Aussie but none seem to deal with towers.

I really want to get the Mirage/Mediator combo because then I can get cheap as dirt PC graphics cards and the like, and I won't have to worry about extravagent shipping costs for custom Amiga hardware again.

The problem with going through a retailer is that I'll have to pay retail markups as well as shipping, which I imagine will add up to about the same as buying direct from Elbox anyway.

To be honest I think I'm going to have to give up on the idea of ever getting a tower or a  mediator.  I just can't justify spending that amount of money merely making my system more expandable, when I could get an entirely new PC for almost half that.  Not that I ever will.

So I'll never know the joy of having a graphics card...

Oh well, maybe something will come up on Aussie or Kiwi EBay.

[xyth]

I had a look at Anything Amigas website but didn't see anything for the 1200, but I shall e-mail them and find out.  Sounds promising.

And if that fails I believe a wooden case will be the way to go.  I can't metalwork for s**t but my carpentry skills are passable.  Though lego looks like a fun project..

[xyth]

@DoomMaster and The_Editor:

A4000s do occasionally show up for sale down here, and I may well consider it next time I see one.  But my 1200 and I have been together for near on 12 years and I'm loathe to give it up.  (Aside from an early stint with an A500, it's the only computer I've ever owned).

Moving to the US wouldn't be a problem as I'm a Canadian citizen as well as a kiwi.  But I wouldn't ever consider it.  The American form of democracy(?) just doesn't feel right to me.

Besides I've yet to discover a country that makes better ice cream than NZ and you've really got to take these sort of things into consideration when deciding where to live