AmigaOne 500

[Daedalus]

@commodorejohn

Having worked in a shop selling computer parts for a couple of years, I can testify that there are *plenty* of people who are too technically incompetent to be trusted with a screwdriver. The amount of machines we've had returned because people tried upgrading the CPU or motherboard, only to break pins off the chips, or not put spacers behind the board, or even fitting the CPU heatsink with insulating foam sticky pads. Buying as a complete package isn't for me, or for a lot of people, but there are many people out there who would benefit from just being handed a working machine.

As for this particular machine - if you don't like it, don't buy it. Run MorphOS or AROS on your dual G5 Mac and be happy with that. That's obviously not the market Hyperion want, and at the end of the day it's their decision. Let them at it, if they fail because of it, they fail. It's not like the MorphOS fans will be affected by that in any way, so why do they really care?

For what it's worth, it's not an $1100 board in a $40 case for $1400. It might not be a great deal, but it's nowhere near as bad as you're making it out to be. Basically, you're looking at €200 for the package over the motherboard. So that's a case, PSU, 2GB RAM, optical drive, SATA controller board, hard drive and mouse for €200. Probably not €200 worth of stuff, but much, much more than $40.

[Daedalus]

Yes, there is a certain amount of competition for users that way, but they're not really on the same turf. Apart from the Peg2 they don't run on the same hardware, and neither set of developers is going to change that. New (returning) users have the choice of which OS they want to use, but it's not an equal comparison since there's a vast rift between the hardware bases. So they can choose to spend a heap of money on new hardware and AmigaOS4, or far less money on 2nd hand hardware and MorphOS, or less money again on AROS. Different people in different situations are going to go for different approaches depending on what they need or want, and seeing as there's so little overlap between the different systems, I'm sure most potential customers would end up falling into one or other system almost automatically.

Perhaps those OS4 users you say are retreating into a shell are sick and tired of being told that they made the wrong choice, that they've wasted their money, and so on. What's the point in that? I'm well aware of the differences between MOS and OS4, and I get quite fed up with it. I enjoy my hobby and don't want to be constantly given reasons again and again why I shouldn't be partaking in the way I do, why doing it the MOS way is better, cheaper and faster. I don't care, though I wouldn't consider myself having retreated into a shell. I'm just ignoring the criticisms that float my direction so I can enjoy my hobby as *I* want.