What's happened in 5 years?

[Gojirax]

I know I can scour the forums and the rest of the web to get the answers to this question, and I have done some considerable reading. I know now what the A1 is, and it appears OS4 is only for sale with the purchase of an A1 system.

Amiga Inc. appear to have shriveled up and gone dormant, but are for some reason not dead.

I used to follow the Amiga feverishly. I even spent thousands of dollars in 1997 to fly to St. Louis to meet Petro Tschenko and Jim SomethingfromGateway. I was the president of the Vancouver Amiga Users Group in Washington State and owned one of almost every model of Amiga. But times got hard and I had to sell them all.

If you're bored and can summarize the last 5 years I would greatly appreciate it.

What companies have left the Amiga?

What companies have come to the Amiga?

What companies are still with the Amiga?

Does anybody still have a grand plan or a dream they are pursuing? (I see someone's making an ECS Amiga on a single chip, but not officially for any real reason yet.)

What kind of Amigas are people using today? Is there anything being done for 68k Amigas or is it all PPC/A1/Elbox etc?

How big is MorphOS?

When I was reading about OS4 and the A1 yesterday I couldn't help but think there's a market out there for it, but not at it's current price.

I work in the healthcare industry and one of the biggest concerns is getting people logged out of a workstation and getting someone else logged into it with the least amount of time wasted. (Shared workstations among many doctors or nurses etc.)

Thin client (Diskless network booting) workstations are being researched for this purpose. They would be safe from virus's because they wouldn't have a hard drive. They would be safe from Spyware for this same reason.

The down side is that you don't have a hard drive so everything you run would be from a Citrix session.

Is there a Citrix client or interface that could be ported to the AmigaOS4 fairly easily? I see that things made for Linux are fairly simple to port.

The A1 could be a perfect "Thin Client" since it can warm boot in 10 seconds, and it would give you the power of having your browser and possibly some other small applications locally. With a local hard drive that wasn't succeptible to Virus and Spyware you could cache a lot of things to speed up your experience.

Anyway, I know this thread goes in a lot of directions, and I'm sorry for that, it's just been a long time.

Thanks,
Jack

[Gojirax]

Thanks for the prompt and detailed replies!

I see there are still a fair number of Amiga users that stick around if only to complain about the lack of anything being done for their beloved platform. I appreciate their input as well, as it paints a complete picture of the situation.

One of the reasons I'm looking into the Amiga market again is because there has been a massive shift in the way technology is used in the last 4 years. Microsoft and Intel boxes had at one point become the only real solution to people's need to be connected and live in the world of technology.

With the advent of cell phones that can play MP3's and movies and games, and the rise in power of the iPod, the power of Palm devices, digital cameras and the like, there's as big a market for mobile computing as there is for desktop computing. I think this is what Jim Whatshisname saw back in 1997.

Some will say "But mobile devices aren't computers!"

I would reply with "And I don't take my desktop PC with me in the car, or camping, or to my office etc."

We will soon see Palm sized devices with the power of a full sized desktop with a projection screen, a kickstand and a projected infra-red keyboard that you can set on a table or desk and use it like a desktop PC. You will be able to surf the internet, listen to music, take pictures, record movies, talk on the phone and send Email from a computer the size of a palm pilot.

When you get home, you dock it and it becomes your regular desktop PC.

When you get into your car it will provide you with GPS functions, map functions and it will get XM radio reception as well.

You will be able to sync your MP3 collection with it and listen in the car or at work. You will be able to get On-Demand pay-per-view on the road during long trips.

Microsoft doesn't own this yet, and with their focus on subscription based large scale software they aren't in a position to own it. It's up for grabs.

It would be nice to see someone come up with a small device that ran fast and had all the basic functions that are already in one form or another available to Amiga hardware. But that's just my dreamer side talking.

[Gojirax]

I should have phrased that more carefully.

I meant "The cash wielding Masses"

Joe iPod for instance.