Two New Full Systems Based on Sam440ep-Flex

[dammy]

I understand that, but the problem is that that is the price. The people behind it are probably not much more than breaking even at that price. To sell it at 500 euros would be a large loss, including the OS developers. Small volume design and production is expensive, it's a fact of life.

These people aren't driving Ferraris here, they're just trying to make a living.

That's the problem, it's not economically viable product anymore while the alternatives costs are significantly less.  The bad calls Hyperion has made over the past ten or so years has them painted in a corner leaving them no where to go.  Time will tell, but I believe this is check-mate.

[dammy]

I think you've been saying it's Game Over for quite a while now.

Can you show us exactly what years did Hyperion add to the Amiga user base and by how much?  Showing nothing but a decline and the only hopes to increase the number of Amiga users is based on expensive hardware in a worsening world economy is check-mate IMO.  I have my doubts if there wasn't a embedded customer for the SAM boards if ACube would have ever produced anything for the Amiga past the first batch.  Hobby is one thing, but even a hobby there is a point of no return when no one will make hardware available for the hobby.

[dammy]

As nobody has figures for Amiga users, obviously it's impossible to say that. Hyperion aren't in control of the World Economy, though, and nor are they in charge of basic economics. You can't blame Hyperion for the fact that a low-volume Amiga costs more than a high-volume PC.

Sure I can, they could have opted long ago to port to a arch that made economic sense.  Instead they are hanging in with PPC which does not make sense as the world spirals towards portables.

How can it be check-mate while there are still companies making hardware (ACube, A-Eon) and software (Hyperion)? Check-mate means game over, end of story, kaput; yet quite clearly this isn't the case.

Considering when they were announced and or released, I can't consider the A-Eon AmigaOne X1000 nor the SAM460 as "new."  Hyperion has indeed released an update, but it was mostly bug fixes as far as I can see.  

I agree that there's a point of no return, yes - but we're clearly not past that point because there still are new things coming out, so by definition it can't be.

What keeps coming out?  Sam460 was announce April of 2010 and first  X1000 prototype(s) was mid 2009.  and then finally released nearly a year ago.  Or are you referring to the "upcoming" 400MHz Limebook that was released back in 2009?

[dammy]

For those too young, "It's over" quote is from a movie:

http://youtu.be/V8lT1o0sDwI

[dammy]

Trevor has already said he's working on future models with Varisys.
The gestation period for a new machine when you're a small team is in the region of 2-3 years, further complicated by things like the Xena - so I'd class having two machines released in the last two years as being current. If we were using ARM chips we'd still have the same development time more or less - we don't all want portables, after all; some of us still want desktops and that's mostly unexplored territory for ARM.

My reply was about any announcements with hard tech information which, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to appear.  Small mobos prototyping should never take 2-3 years if the ODM is worth a damn. ARM has the one advantage that there are plenty of designs out there that anyone can take advantage of and have dev boards ready to go for porting in the matter of months if not weeks. Look at what Genesi has done with ARM systems.  Once the A16 is released, there is your desktop worthy ARM.

You have to admit that compared to the Dark Ages (i.e. between the end of the AmigaOne XE line and the arrival of the Sam), it's positively thriving. Nothing happened in those years hardware-wise. Now we only have two companies making new hardware, but that's still two more than we used to.

I don't count the netbook because we don't know anything except it's probably not new hardware.... this thread is about hardware.

I will point out that this community was multiple times larger during those "Dark Ages."  Had Hyperion ported OS4 to Pegs earlier, I doubt the SAMs would have been offered.  So here we sit and the total population world wide is probably down in the mid 4 digits vs mid 5 digits ten years ago, if not higher.   Once herald Amiga fairs drew hundreds and now if a couple of dozen show up, it's called a success.  The constant adding of new OS4 core devs draws attention to the fact the OS4 core dev pool is constantly losing proven talent.  The only hope I see is if Trevor spends a whole lot of money on designing and building cheap and powerful PPC systems that he will probably never see a return of investment on.  If he has deep enough pockets for the Amiga charity, more power to him.  As far as ACube is concern, I don't know where they are going to go from here if their embedded customer needs the 400 series as it's CPU core.

[dammy]

However, like you said, Microsoft is very leanient - I've never heard them deny a license activation unless you specifically tell them you're doing something against the license agreement.  Typically they ask only how many PCs the license is installed on - if you say 1, they will give you an activation code.

Microsoft has created a new license which should be around OEM costs: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/windows-8-gets-personal-use-license-for-anyone-building-their-own-pc-20120821/