Alan dismissing the handhelds at AmiGBG

[Dan]

 "Its a nice concept, but I.. I don't find palm-top computers
      particularily interesting, personally, but you know, thats..."

Why ?!!!!
It would really make those Windowsconsumers shut up:
Yes, of course i can run exactly the same apps on the same OS at my handheld!
That would be the ultimate way to show of AmigaOS flexiblity and effectiveness.
They don´t need the money to license a handwriting recognition program, just build a Psion series 5 like device but with a flippable lid so it can be used in a Palmmode for reading/viewing.
And put some  joypad buttons on there for games.

I mean even the biggest selling handhelds is
1)Phones
2)Gameboys
3)Musicplayers (mp3,MD,mp3enabled palmtops)

What could be provided by an Amiga handheld in order of importance:
1) Games (old and new, through UAE we already have more good games than Gameboy)
2) mp3player
3)calender
4)textviewer/ebook
5)picviewer
6)mail
7)movieplayer

"MicroATX AmigaONE, which is already in design. Now clearly this is aimed mainly at the server side"
"server farm of 10,000 servers"
"the A1SE Lite" "a module which will go into kiosk systems, set top boxes, things like
video surveylance systems. "
[color=0000FF]Naah, think BIG think SMALL![/color]
Besides then the DE crap really would get ported to an Amiga.
An Amiga in every living room is a smaller market than an amiga in everyones pocket.
Then if the Amiga gamemarket took of on the handheld, the Amiga would once again be a name in the gameindustry.
That would mean  that they would consider doing games for the Amiga DVD64 when it´s launched, maybe it wouldn´t beat the PS3 but it would wipe the floor with the Xbox and Gamecube.

Anyway, everybody always wanted portable amigas.

[Dan]

@xaccrocheur

Wow. Have you ever used a Palmtop ? Do you realize the order of magnitude by witch a PalmTop OS is different from a desktop one ? Most of all, do you want AmigaINC to make the same mistake sa Microsoft did with WindowsCE ?

I did dream about a PalmTop Amiga. then I bought a Palm5000, and realized it was about that !

pX

Not Palm or WinCE, but i use my Apple Newton Messagepad 2000 everyday :roll: and it´s nothing like an desktop OS, can you say "objectsoup" :-) . It can´t even use standard Flashcards because of it.
But what would the AmigaOS need to run as a PDA? It already is small memory footprint and instant-on, it´s just a matter of some save RAM and open documents to Flashstorage module, even Windows has that. Although I wouldn´t use it, just save your work and turn it off as always with Amigas :-P

[Dan]

@Valan

I understood from Alans comment is that he personally doesn't find them interesting as a hardware base from a productivety POV.

I think that is true. Watching a mm presentation or doing work is not what people buy a PDA for.

At the moment a PDA is mainly for entering data and accessing it again.

And games have been and will be on every hardware platform.

And what is productivety?
Office,CAD,3D modeling, videoediting and coding is not what most people use their computers for.

Doing what i do most of my time in front of the computer,running games, paintprograms, surfing, e-mail and some textediting  is perfectly doable on an PDA.
And i prefer to write with a pen instead of pressing keyboard buttons, my brain works much better with a pen. As they said in programmingclass:
"Write the design down on paper first"

I think that the Amiga would best serve PDAs through the AmigaDE. AmigaOS would serve only as a 'Kickstart' type of system.

I don´t care about DE it has nothing to do with Amiga they are just using the name, and you can´t really belive that they can compete with Sun Java???

[Dan]

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Jan/bpd20030123018304.htm
IBM PowerPC 405 based PDA. Both MorphOS and AmigaOS4 should be able to run on this device, instead of linux.

@Darth_X
I have seen that one before it was exactly was i was thinking about.:-D

[Dan]

@Khephren

Motorola produce a 66mhz 68020 dragonball mobile processor, boxer produced a one chip amiga chipset, why wasn't a mobile classic ever produced from these parts?
Even today it would be far more powerfull than my psion, or winCE devices. Lightwave on the move anyone? or alienbreed3d2? I think amiga should have produced a PDA/mini note (with OS3's low foot print in terms of processor and memory requirements, it would be ideal) rather than the amiga anywhere they are touting at the moment. It would have been one last shout from the classic before OS4. Besides, i'm sick of lugging a heavy laptop around just so I can emulate my Amiga

I don´t know about the Boxer chipset but in a interview with Petro Tyschtschenko back in October 96 in swedish magazine AmigaInfo he said that they had combined Paula, Alice och Lisa on one chip!!!
Why was this never used?!!! :-? :madashell:
Today it wouldn´t be of much use in a PDA(most have 16bit screens today), but in an game device it would still be useful( hardware sprites).

Those Sony PalmOS devices sounds pretty intressting with Dragonball 66Mhz, 16MB Ram and mp3-playback.
I still don´t like the small screen, 320x480 16bit on the most advanced model, i prefer 640x256 Highres pal noninterlace.
I know 480x320 as I use my Newton in landscape mode most of the time,it´s not enough for comfortable text viewing.
And 320x240 isn´t that a C64 mode?? Anyway it´s not enough for UAE, so just forget it.

[Dan]

MorphOS is everything you're describeing that you want... why not give it a try???... so far Genesi/BPlan havent lied about release dates/etc... the Eclipsis looks like it might be just what you want... the psylent was already demo'd ... the Pegasos1 is done... the Pegasos 2 is on the way... MOS is shipping... they have plans to give it away for free to Phase5 cards...

Yeah why didn´t i get a A4000 with an CyberstormPPC when it was available and i had the money,me is  STUPID, STUPID, STUPID

the Eclipsis looks like it might be just what you want...

To much junk making it to expensive, nobody needs cameras in their pdas and gsmmodules should be optional extra, and where is the specs?

What i want is either of these
A)AmigaOS 4.0/MorphOS/AROS running pda with PowerPC CPU, Compact Flash slots for storage and network, ,USB, serial port, keyboard, gamepad buttons, 640x256 pressure sensetive screen that flips around to the back tobe used as a notepad.

B) WB3.9/AROS pdawith 68k cpu and the same specs above but maybe without USB preferable with an all AGAcustom chips integrated into one chip and working as an A1200 compatible. Wow, that would have video out too.

[Dan]

Look, Alan is (like everyone else) entitled to an opinion. The question was "what do you think about..." and the answer was "well, personally, I...". Calm down.

Ok, if it was his personal opinion.
It don´t neccesarily have to be Eyetech making it
Maybe someone else can make an AmigaOS pda
It´s  to forget that the Amiga isn´t just one company these days. It was much easier back in the Commodore era, only one company to complain about.
Anyway the A1G3Lite is good news if it ever will be made, say  DIY-portable everyone.

Anyway the Amiga needs to find a niche to use to get back into the mind of people, an obscure and expensive desktop computer won´t do it. In the old days Atari had MIDImusic, Apple had DTP, MS DOS PCs had spreedsheets(Excel) and Amiga had video and computer gaming, later we took the multimedia market too.
Nowadays PC still has the officemarket, Apple has the  DTP and video market. The music and mutlimedia market is split between them. Palm has the pda market, Symbian has the mobilephones, Sun/IBM/Linux has the servers and Sony PS2 has the gaming. Now were would the Amiga reenterthe computer market??
Well obviously in the video and multimedia market but that is small markets that don´t sell many units. If Amiga want to become on equal level to the Macs again we need something more and beating the Playstation out of nowhere seems to be impossible. But the pda market isn´t closed for a new player yet as seen by the linux pdas.
How did eyetech got into the amiga it was because of multimedia right???
So I´m sure that they will target that but we need  video and pdas too and maybe even a gamemachine or STB

[Dan]

Is that Fleecy at http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Jan/bpd20030123018304.htm a fake?

Probably

[Dan]

Also no modern PDA supports 640x512 or 640x480 to my knowledge, which would at least be required to get a lot of amiga apps running.

No we just need 640x256 (Pal Highres noninterlaced) which doesn´t exists either.
But there are some devices with 640x240 screens like the HP jornada and the psion netpad, actually psion netpad is the formfactor i want but it lacks some hardware.
It´s to bad the highest res on the palm is the Sony 480x320 and the next set of palm will be arm7 based( not 68k compatible).
Anyway i don´t think anyone will make pdas with screens that are satisfactory to me, might just aswell do one myself.
DIY is the way!

[Dan]

Quote:
I don´t care about DE it has nothing to do with Amiga they are just using the name, and you can´t really belive that they can compete with Sun Java???

I recall, Sun’s Java VM is limited to Java language... Tao’s VP technology is not limited to one programming language.

Edit: removed the “not” from the first sentence.  

Actually you was right the first time, there are other languages for Java and you could build an compiler that compiles to Java code and thats according to a my teacher in computer science when was I taking the initial computer science course at uni.