My evening with Commodore USA, LLC

[danwood]

That isn't the problem.  It is seeing the Amiga name abused that I have issues with.

My thoughts exactly, and I struggle to see how anybody who calls themselves an "Amiga fan" could be happy about this.  Relaunching the "Amiga" as a pc running Windows is a stab through the heart for any real Amiga fans who know and love the machine/os they grew up with. It's a massive insult, imagine how Mac owners would react in the same situation, some pc clone maker starts making "Macs" and shoving Windows 7 on them.

I cannot believe this Barry guy is being so insulting and abusive to the Amiga name/legacy and still has the nerve to call himself a commodore/amiga fan. Os4 might not be the "real amiga" to some, but at least it's the nearest thing we have, and actually runs amiga apps, not just a generic faceless Dell-esq pc clone in an Amiga badged case, how much that saddens me, and what an un-dignified and un-classy end to the Amiga legacy :-(

[danwood]

This is 2011, nothing we have is related other than by license to the real amiga. But we can fight and squable and carry on about stuff we don't like, or we can relax, and like what we like and let others do the same.

Simply not true, AmigaOs 4.x not only retains source codes, file structures, and pretty much everything from the Commodore days, but it also runs Amiga apps. This "Workbench 5" Linux distro will not run any Amiga apps, it will run Linux apps, therefore your insistence that Workbench 5 is no less an "Amiga" than Os4 is total bollocks. Os4 may not be made by commodore/amiga, but it IS the Amiga OS we've known and loved for the last three decades, I can still run my 1985 version of Graphicraft on it if I want to, along with Deluxe Paint, Wordworth, Imagine etc. Os4 is still the same Amiga operating system, just recompiled for Ppc.

[danwood]

That's not the point... would a NATAMI in a Amiga case sell? That's the point?
Sure, you could sell a few hundreds FPGAs... do not think it would justify the investment.

Why would Sony let any other company sell PS3 rebranded? That's crazy... especially considering what they are doing to those guys that broke the "encryption"

No it wouldn't sell, but in all honesty I can't see this selling either. At a push, the c64 pc will get a few old farts maybe buying it for a bit of retro-novelty, if it's very low priced (as in, like a toy).

You, yourself said only 5000 or so people in the world are interested in the Amiga today, so that begs the question, why bother? If the brand is so worthless, the existing Amiga community are not interested in a Windows 7/Linux box with an Amiga badge on, anyone who does remember the Amiga will just think of a groundbreaking computer from the 80s/90s, so this machine will not interest them when they see it's just the same as the pc they have sitting on their desk at home.

As someone with a business degree, I cannot see any market for these products. I keep reading that Barry is a fantastic business man, yet I cannot understand who his products are aimed at?

Amiga fans will take a Windows box wearing an Amiga badge as the ultimate insult, so that small market is alienated already.

Amiga commercially died decades ago, we have os4/mos as a hobby, and that's fun, but dressing up a bog standard PC as a 20 year old Amiga, or a 30 year old C64 just won't interest anybody in 2011 imho.

Even when Commodore still had a recognisable brand, Escom etc couldn't shift Commodore pcs, you have even less chance today against the likes of Dell/HP with their cut-throat prices.

At best, put out some Amiga/c64 on a joystick things for £20, he'd shift loads of them, but otherwise, just let these dinosaur brands rest with some dignity, if he really is a Commodore fan, he should know that all he's doing is raping this once-great companies legacy and ruining lots of fond memories for those of us that "were there".

[danwood]

That would be almost as bad as gutting their machine and running it on Intel with a Unix OS... oh wait.

There's a world of difference between running on an x86 architecture and shipping Macs with Windows 7, the reason we were Amiga users/Mac users is because we thought Windows sucked generally.

Even if they manage to skin Ubuntu to look like Workbench, it still won't run Amiga apps.  Apple did a LOT more than just skin up a Linux distro, you cannot compare the two.

[danwood]

Exactly Duce, well said. I don't wish to be rude, but reading excitable comments from red/dam my about how Barry is going to be doing Superbowl TV ads, his own AppStore, and dreams of a global Commodore/Amiga relaunch, my first instinct is to cringe.

In reality anybody who's passed Business Skills for the 11+ can see this company/project has absolutely no hope of succeeding. Those who are expecting CUSA to be the second coming should really learn a few basics in business before believing in this crap so much.

At best, they'll release a few pcs in expensive cases to look like C64s, which as someone said earlier is "retromod" territory. The general public aren't going to be falling over themselves to buy a low-end PC shoe-horned into a cheesy looking 30 year old 80s relic skin, the breadboard c64 even looked outdated by 1987, hence the introduction of the c64c.

I really can't see the shifting anymore than a thousand or two, same with the Amiga-esq PCs, this is not a business model that can succeed outside of the small "retro" computing community, and it seems even 50% of them are against this project.

I give it all 6 months and maybe the c64PC launch after that I'd expect we'll have heard the last of them after some big financial losses.