why are sams so expensive?

[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

[quarkx]

I do think they are just dreaming to get a foot hold in the market at the current prices. I know IF i had that kind of money to spend on a Amiga, I would much rather use the money to go to an A4000 tower or even an A3000 tower instead.
They are just shooting themselves in the foot at the current prices, don't worry, the SAM will be just a distant memory soon if they don't drop the prices, only a handfull will be sold, and, in the end, it will be just another failed attempt. Then everyone who was involved with it will all be standing around scatching them selves and asking "what went wrong?". The same will be said for the mini-mig, c-one etc.- All nice hardware, but all way over priced for what they are.

[cv643d]

Yeah...  is that so?

I bet if you tried 4.1 on a next-gen Amiga you would sell all your classic systems and get one as fast as possible.

Think about this tonight: what is better, to have those systems in your sig in the closet doing nothing, or to have AmigaOS on modern hardware on a system that is capable of work today?

[quarkx]

Yeah...  is that so?

I bet if you tried 4.1 on a next-gen Amiga you would sell all your classic systems and get one as fast as possible.

Think about this tonight: what is better, to have those systems in your sig in the closet doing nothing, or to have AmigaOS on modern hardware on a system that is capable of work today?

IF the Sam were a reasonable price, I would buy it in a heart beat, but (too me) a reasonable price for ANY motherboard is LESS than $200. You can get a kick butt ASUS motherboard for less than $200 USD.
BTW ALL my amigas are set up (except 2 A500's which are in the Closet, as I have no room to put them put out on my 2 benches) but thats not the point. IF they wanted wanted, REALLY WANTED to get them out and make them a better sucsess then all the past "Failed" machines, they would sell them at a reasonable price.


Simple math why sell 10 boards at $700USD when you will sell a hundred or more at $200

[save2600]

You can't really compare the ownership of classic Amiga's (whether they sit in a closet or not) to the new hardware. The price is cost prohibitive for many and a perfectly logical dissuader to anyone looking to purchase a new computer period. Yeah, at that price point, the masses are going to stay away. Of course they are. Especially when you're just talking about a barebones motherboard. MOST people want a pre-built system in this day and age. One that sets itself up upon startup for the first time. The SAM mobo and ALL of the others Pegasus/Efika, etc. are designed and built for the hobbyist used to justifying the expense of their hobbies. Always was, always will be. These companies obviously are not interested in the old Tramiel way of thinking. They want to maximise their margins for TODAY and if they cared about the community, would re-invest most of the profit into R&D and production of newer technologies to continue making money in this specific arena.  

I'd LOVE a complete SAM setup w/ 4.1, etc. But it's a little too cost prohibitive for me and probably always will be at that price. And I'm not even comparing it to the price of a PeeCee either (that's silly). I think $900-$1k is a lot of money for a hobby computer - period. Halve the cost of a complete system and I'd buy one right now. And no, I would NEVER sell my A2500 to pay for a modern "Amiga" system  ;-)  

At least when you purchase one of these systems (A1, Pegaos, SAM) you'll get over 80-90% of your investment back when it comes time to sell. What machine (or ANY product today) can you say that about?

[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.

SAM doesn't win in either category, unfortunately.

Expensive, underpowered, unfriendly to new users, and not very likely to be able to take the place of a mainstream machine.

The only things it's got going for it are the nostalgia factor and that it's something new to play with that has a connection to an old name.  If Vtech or some random vendor put out a machine with similar specs at that price, it'd get laughed at.

[persia]

They have an OS that will run on equipment that has the power of a mobile phone and they don't let it run on desktop level equipment!  Heck you can get a far more powerful Mac Mini G4 with hard drive and case for a couple hundred US dollars.  This is not collectors stuff like old Amiga  hardware, it's just a low spec board built this year.

[klx300r]

@ Mightyzorlac

the same reason why PPC cards cost a zillion dollars and A4000's are selling for ridiculous prices on Ebay!
it's a niche market and historically if you want to play in such a market you gotta pay :-)

btw, can't wait to get a Sam of my own!

[Firedawg]

SAM doesn't win in either category, unfortunately.

Expensive, underpowered, unfriendly to new users, and not very likely to be able to take the place of a mainstream machine.

The only things it's got going for it are the nostalgia factor and that it's something new to play with that has a connection to an old name.  If Vtech or some random vendor put out a machine with similar specs at that price, it'd get laughed at.

Agree totally, as with the other posts made by everyone.  I have been wanting to support OS4.1, I just cannot afford the hardware.  Maybe, when the MacMini version of OS4.1 is out.

The Dawg

[klx300r]

SAM doesn't win in either category, unfortunately.

Expensive, underpowered, unfriendly to new users, and not very likely to be able to take the place of a mainstream machine.

funny tone007,  that's what most of my pc loving buddies were saying about my Amiga back in the day !!!  I support Hyperion, Amiga OS4.1 and Sam & I know many other Amigans do too :-)
in the end to each his own my friends..there really is no right or wrong...I love my classics but love the fact that new Amiga products are produced today :-) besides, the more users and developers that come on board, the faster Amiga OS and its software base will progress...so get a Sam & OS4.1 & have fun !!

[B00tDisk]

Amiga stuff has always been expensive.  The first 030 card I owned (and incidentally the last one), I bought a 4mb SIMM for.  Called an Amiga retailer listed in the back of AmigaWorld magazine (boy that brings back the memories) and they wanted $289 for it.

Called a PC vendor here in town, out the door for $179.

Same deal with the hard drive for that same system.  60mb drive from an Amiga dealer (different one)?  $149.  Bought from a vendor in Computer Shopper for $99.

In this particular case it is, however, economics of scale.  They produce Sam boards in bunches of what, 75 to 100?  At most?

Compare that with, say, an Asus intel mobo produced in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.  Volume discounts!

[Tajmaster]

Anyone got any ideas as to how many SAM boards have been sold?
They seem to go out of stock pretty quick but that doesnt mean Dwayne Dibbly if they are only getting 2 in at a time!;)

[lsmart]

Amiga stuff has always been expensive.

Not true. In germany the original A500 sold for 1000DM in 1986 (if I recall correctly).  A reasonable equipped PC was no cheaper and it didn´t even have color, was slower and had no sound except for the beeps. Not to mention the OS.

A Sam is as expensive as a well equipped Mac mini. You don´t get as much for the price, that´s for sure, but you can´t say that it is impossible to buy one. Hey at least you can buy new hardware to run AmigaOS4 on it today! During the years before it was much harder to get PPC-Amigas.

Of course a cheap PC and cloanto´s "Amiga Forever" might be all the Miggy you need, but I am happy with Sam so far.

[RMK305]

For me it's not how much the board costs, it's what am I able to do with the machine? Serriously, I don't really know what it can do. I use the PC for some word, excel, internet/e-mail, watching d/l videos, youtube, mp3s and playing the occasional game.

I use the Amigas for classic games that I love, although I'm thinking of getting the A4000 online somehow so I can start too use it for other things too and maybe ween myself off the PC for the most part.

Are there any commercial games out there for OS4? Any software lists available?

[yoodoo]

See os4depot.net and aminet for a lot of software available.

You can use Sam/OS4 for all those things you mention. Although Flash support is minimal at the moment, it is possible to watch Youtube type videos etc using a little add-on to OWB.

Using the Cygnix package, you can use AbiWord and Gnumeric for word processing and spreadsheets - should easily suit most people's needs.

Then there's stuff like Pagestream, Hollywood.

Lots of ported games available. The last "commercial" games I can think of are BOH and WordMeUp.

[terminator4]

Economies of scale.  They are not made in large numbers.  I estimate the entire amiga worldwide population to be 10,000 at most and even that might be generous.   Hence, the maker of this board (Acube) does need to make some profit too.  So does the Amiga OS owner (whoever it may be now).  If I started selling hardware why would I sell it if it wasn't worth my time?  And no if i drop the price, I want to see 100s or 1000s of orders.
Like others have said: its a small market.  If price is too hefty then go ahead and buy the crappy windows machine.
The amiga was never good on the price even with Commodore.  And lets face Amiga was never about gigahertz and gigabytes like the PC.   The quad core pc may still crawl with vista on it...


HERE is a question: at what price would you say SAM would be competitive???  (much more creative than whining about the current price).