why are sams so expensive?

[Mightyzorlac]

Why is the Sam Flex so expensive? come on £629 for a half a gig memory under 1Gig machine? is it 1999? When I could buy a crappy windows machine for £429 and with a monitor? Wish Amiga inc would step up and make some hardware and stop messing about with making rubbish mobile games that no one buys . 15 years ive waited.... you could get this for £429....:angry:

Processor Type Quad Intel. Core 2 Clock-Speed2.33GHz
Front Side BUS1333MHzCache4 MB
Operating-SystemWindows Vista.
Home Premium
RAM Memory4096
MB Hard Disk
Capacity 500
GBOptical
Drive 1DVD Rewriter
Graphics DescriptionIntel GMA X4500
No of USB
connections 6
PCKeyboard
Mouse


or

AMD Phenom X3 8750 Triple-Core processor
(2.40GHz, 2MB Cache)
4GB DDR2 memory

640GB SATA hard drive (7200rpm)

• 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce GT120
• Dual Layer DVD Rewriter
• 6x USB and 1x FireWire port
• DVI, VGA and HDMI video output
• 10/100 network LAN

But because i love the amiga so much  I will buy one at the end of the month (sam flex) . Ive just bought an A4000 last weekend at this car boot sale , £45 what a bargain , the guy who was selling did'nt have a clue what it was or how priceless they are now days, like hens teeth in the UK , he just though it was Junk, how wrong he was!...

[amiga_3k]

It's expensive for the same reason a Rolls Royce is expensive: They are not build in big numbers. And no, Rolls Royce is technically not more advanced then your everyday Skoda.

[Dwyloc]

Put simply its a an industrial embedded specification motherboard with a normal industrial board price tag.  With this sort of board you tend to pay more but much longer guaranteed availability of the same specification of board unlike the short time frames of availability of most consumer grade boards.

You also tend to may more for passively cooled boards with no moving parts.  As you are not likely to sell the required number of board to amiga OS users along to make a board thats just for Amiga clone OS thats why you see boards like the sam440 and EFIKA being used to run amiga OS's as they can make a few larger sales to other customers to help make production cost effective.

The down side is you wont get the fastest board in the world as for most of the sort of devices these boards are target at just dont need or want a supper fast and hot board.

[Dwyloc]

I think the question you need to ask yourself when purchassing a system bast on a board like the sam440 is dose it do what I need/want at a cost I can afford not is it the fastest system I can buy for the money.

I decided it would do what I wanted just fine and as I already own a PC desktop and laptop which I was not trying to replace but complement the CPU speed is not that important to me as long as it was as fast or faster than my old 060/PPC blizzard card which is more than 10 years old know and is likely to fail at some time (thats why I am using my more easily replaced Blizzard 040 card in my A1200 Tower these days).

[zylesea]

Why is the Sam Flex so expensive?

Because it gets produced in minimal quantity. Also the board has many layers, therefor it is rather expensive to build. If you can wait a little longer, better gor for MorphOS on a Mac Mini G4. A Mac mini costs a fraction of a Sam, but has much, much more power.
If you don't like to wait, you may consider an Efika alternatively. They are still sold by several distributors and are significantly cheaper than the SAM while delivering a nice user experience, too. Of course it is no powerhorse, but with the latest MorphOS 2.3 and OWB1.4 it is even  possible to surf the web *convenietly* (okay google maps still takes a while). I use it quite a lot. IMO it's worth to be considered seriously.

Edit: Just tried google maps again on my Efika with OWB1.4 - it is impressingly fast now. Not much worse than on my Atom (N270) Eee 900A with Firefox. Impressing!

[Faerytale]

The question is rather.. why not make AOS running on standard cheap to buy hardware?
Yeah I know, the question has been asked many times and with thousand of answers..

[save2600]

The question is rather.. why not make AOS running on standard cheap to buy hardware?

Overly simplistic answer: because then, a superior OS would be in the hands of more users
which would potentially (and probably) further popularise the Amiga again and they just
can't let that happen  ;-)

[gertsy]

Coz the out of court settlement btwn Hype and AINC said No !!  Hmmmm.

Gertsy

[Firedawg]

I believe in the free market place where anyone can sell at any price they wish.  That being said, in my opinion it would have been in the best interest of everyone (Acube/current SAM owners) if the cost to produce these boards would have come down after the initial return on investment was achieved, only Acube would know this.  The cost of the boards initially would have been higher and expectedly so, but after a certain point to attempt to increase the customer base the price should have been dropped.   Developers of both software and hardware would be attracted by the increase in users and potential customers.  

Forgive my basic look at economics (basic college Macro/Micro) in regards to Acubes pricing schemes, but I believe they could pull in more buyers who are on the bubble of buying if they lowered the price on these boards, me being one of them.  Also, folks outside of the Amiga family circle could be drawn in with the idea of trying something new if the price was right and the developers were on board to expand the platform.

I would like to hear from those closer to epicenter of why the pricing has stayed so rigid.

The Dawg

[Mightyzorlac]

Bottom line their still to expensive if were ever going to recovery what little market is left for the Amiga , we have to be competitive with price sell many for low...was'nt that Jack Tremell's Moto back in the day...
 
I would happly pay £400 for one..... but not over 600 quid thats just too much..Why wont amiga INC do something ?the hardwares out there....they could be sell amiga by the bucket load, with the right advertising and sell it cheap and to the many , even the corner shop could sell them..and an alternative to windows PC's....

[bloodline]

Just run Icaros on a nice powerful PC... That's what I do and it works for me

[Tajmaster]

Why is the Sam Flex so expensive? come on £629 for a half a gig memory under 1Gig machine? is it 1999? When I could buy a crappy windows machine for £429 and with a monitor? Wish Amiga inc would step up and make some hardware and stop messing about with making rubbish mobile games that no one buys . 15 years ive waited.... you could get this for £429....:angry:
 
Processor Type Quad Intel. Core 2 Clock-Speed2.33GHz
Front Side BUS1333MHzCache4 MB
Operating-SystemWindows Vista.
Home Premium
RAM Memory4096
MB Hard Disk
Capacity 500
GBOptical
Drive 1DVD Rewriter
Graphics DescriptionIntel GMA X4500
No of USB
connections 6
PCKeyboard
Mouse
 
 
or
 
AMD Phenom X3 8750 Triple-Core processor
(2.40GHz, 2MB Cache)
4GB DDR2 memory
 

640GB SATA hard drive (7200rpm)

• 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce GT120
• Dual Layer DVD Rewriter
• 6x USB and 1x FireWire port
• DVI, VGA and HDMI video output
• 10/100 network LAN

But because i love the amiga so much I will buy one at the end of the month (sam flex) . Ive just bought an A4000 last weekend at this car boot sale , £45 what a bargain , the guy who was selling did'nt have a clue what it was or how priceless they are now days, like hens teeth in the UK , he just though it was Junk, how wrong he was!...

 
Did everyone miss the "A4000 for £45"??!?!?!!! God thats a good price, you luck SOB ;) hehe
 
What did you get with it? was the battery thingy whatsit OK?
 
I got an A4000, A2000, 2 x A1200s and a CDTV (all with extras) for £100 :P I had to change my pants when I got the stuff home :roflmao:

[cv643d]

Did they loose money on every Efika they sold? It was so cheap!

[tone007]

...was'nt that Jack Tremell's Moto back in the day..

SAM440, definitely not for the masses!

[Firedawg]

SAM440, definitely not for the masses!

Hey tone007,  

Is price dictating what is for the masses or the OS/Hardware offerings? Just a logic question, nothing personal just interested on your thoughts.

The Dawg