Takers - One Woman's Opinion of the Amiga Mini

[Duce]

I think what Lempkee meant is the often spammy and pot stirring nature of Transition's news postings.

As for the author of the opinion piece, well put.  It's opinion and doesn't need much debate, I'm sure we all feel differently about situations like this to some extent.

[Duce]

I rarely defend the OS4 hardware offerings, because they are so expensive, but in a broader sense I will defend all the NG Amiga offerings.

1 - not all OS4 hardware is $2000.  On a good day, you could pick a SAM/OS4 system up on ebay for under $500, albeit used.  There are many flavors of AOS 4 PPC boards available, from the lowly SAM 440ep like I have, to the X1000.  Prie has always been a barrier of entry for AOS people, and I suspect it always will be unless they port the OS to PPC Mac's.

2 - We are never going to get past this pissing match of what individual people see as a "true Amiga".  We all have different views.  But I know one thing - I can take an old, legacy 68k Amiga program and put it on my SAM/AOS machine and it generally works unless it bangs hardware.  I can do the same with a MOS PPC Mac.  AROS has come a long way in running older Amiga programs without a hitch as well.

I cannot say that for commodity PC hardware in a prefab case with an "Amiga" etching on it that runs Linux, unless they are really going to pull a rabbit out of the hat at last minute, you're buying a PC running Linux.  If C-USA had come up with a way where I can simply click on a legacy Amiga program via desktop on their OS right out of the box, it's a PC to me.  A PC I could throw together with free UAE and the ROM's I already own for a fraction of the price.  I use what works for me, which lately is my SAM and a stripped down XP lite machine that boots directly into 3.1 via WinUAE.

Which one is more of a true Amiga?  In the most specific of terms and definitions, some people don't consider any machine without custom chips an Amiga.  Fair enough.

The original Amiga was revolutionary, not evolutionary.  Was something brand new, completely out of left field.  We will never see anything like that again, I suspect.  It's all about what works for you, I suppose.  Some people spend thousands of dollars building killer, superfast towerised A1200's.  Some buy cheap Mac's and run MorphOS.  Some buy the Acube boards and run OS 4.1.
Some just stick with with spare x86 PC's, running their choice of emulation solutions.  Some will certainly see the charm of Commodore USA's products, and they will purchase them.  I hope they are happy with their systems, sincerely - but I am also the first to point out the foibles in their specced builds, lol.  I have built my own systems for nearly 20 years, and wouldn't buy what they are offering, even at cost.

Shouting at the top of ones lungs that "THIS IS THE FUTURE" while trying to drive 500 watts worth of PC components with a 120 watt PSU is something I will gladly point out is a recipe for disaster.

[Duce]

Curious how long it'll be before the crew in Cupertino get up C-USA's ass about the "Mini" name.  I despise tech law, patent law, etc.  But....

But if I was Apple, who have worldwide copyrights and trademarks on the Mac Mini going back 7 years on the tech, name, and form factor, I'd be on C-USA like stink on a monkey.  There is a valid case there.

It's a small computer, in a form and appearance that looks damned near identical to the Apple product.  Add the fact C-USA is using the "Mini" name will be the icing on the cake.  If they've sold even one of these under that name, ahahahaha...

Thing looks like a Mac Mini knockoff, and is even called "Mini".  If this doesn't have C & D written all over it at a bare minimum, I don't know what does.

Apple, a company ballsy enough to sue over swipe to open/unlock technologies on phones, doubt this will go over well come to think of it.  The sticking point is the "mini" denotation, combined with the form factor and visuals of the product.

Pretty sloppy of C-USA, surprised it didn't don on me earlier.  This should be interesting, knowing the long history of Apple's pitbull lawyers.