PC vs amiga pricing in the 80s and 90's. Were PC owners getting screwed?

[Hattig]

I took a look in my old magazines, and in 1984 you could get an 8086 based Advance-86 (but not PC compatible, you had to pay extra for that) for £399. Obviously it wasn't a match for the Amiga, and probably not the Atari ST either, given the 4.77MHz 8086. But neither of these was out then.

Amstrad came out with the PC-1512 in 1986, for £499. This was PC compatible, came with 512KB RAM, and an 8MHz 8086 - and a monitor. This could do 16 colours at 640x200, and it also came with GEM as well as DOS - so more than a match for the Atari ST in many ways. In 1986 this computer was a bargain, at least in the UK.

But as soon as you started looking into 286s, 386s and 486s later on, the prices just rocketed - but the PC started relying on CPU power instead of graphical ability for games, and that brings us to Wolf3D, Doom and Quake, and the rest is history.

[Hattig]

Interesting, I new Amstrad had a hand in cheap PC stuff somewhere. I think they even built a megadrive into one.

What graphics and sound did the Advance-86 have? was it CGA?
Same with the 1512, did have a soundcard? and a colour monitor?. quite the bargain if it did. Same rez and colours as a base ST if i'm not mistaken? Expect it was EGA.

The 1640 was EGA. The 1512 appeared to have some custom graphics enhancements that could be used within GEM, but not DOS. Audio was poor though apparently, I guess you could add an ISA sound card. Still, monitor + PC in 1986 for £500 was probably revolutionary - apparently Amstrad got a 25% of the European PC market from this.

I think the Advance-86 was CGA.

[Hattig]

Compared to the prices of the AtariST and Amiga to the Amstrad, to me it's clear the Amstrad people were ripped off as wel.
-edit- unless.. of course it came with a monitor...

Yeah, the CPCs came with a monitor.