why are sams so expensive?

[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).

[cv643d]

If you like the way of the Amiga, and like to mess with the OS. If you like to run Workbench you are going to really enjoy next gen Amiga.

For myself, the question was never if I want or do not want a next gen Amiga because of price. I was sure I wanted it even if it had a premium price because looking back, I spent some serious cash on this hobby. I was prepared to pay 700 euro for the Boxxer back in the late 90'ies (and that was without a 68k CPU), and hey, if Mick Tinker sees this I am still prepared to pay serious money for a Boxxer system. If you want to belong to the 4.1 club you need to pay for that premium, you may like it or not. But that is just the way it is right now (it may change in the future, we dont know).

What you are going to do with your next gen Amiga system is 100% up to you. Nobody is going to force you to use it over your PC and nobody is going to cheer you for paying 1000 dollars for a pathetic 500 MHz machine, I guess, if you feel the desire to be at the cutting edge of Amiga technology (booth hardware/software tech) you just get it and know what to do with the system.

That cutting edge Amiga tech could have been a quadcore with 4 GB mem for 399 dollars - but it is not. If people could look back and travel back in time I am sure we would today have a 400 dollar Amiga more powerfull than we have now, or maybe -gasp- a free next gen Amiga (would you complain then?). But the situation is what it is, either you like it or not: if you are truly passionate about Amiga, 1000 dollars to experience what a modern variant of AmigaOS feels like is peanuts, and yes the differense between 4.1 and WinUAE is huge (yes even on a fast PC).

If you dont get it, fine, I can fully understand that. But please, I suspect we are all here Amigans at heart and blood so why not be a bit more open minded and positive instead of being so narrow sighted and finding flaws and faults.

This is after all an Amiga community, and Amiga is still alive (at least with life support) - Is that not great?!

So it costs 1500 dollars, so there is no reason at all to get a Sam440, so you can get a five QuadCore systems for that price, so Classic Amiga is the real deal?

Why not take ACTION and JUST DO IT?

[yoodoo]

The SAM board costs about £400 depending on the version and speed. The rest of the £620 is the OS4 license (about £100) and for the rest of the system's hardware: case, drives etc.

Yes, pricey compared to commodity x86 hardware produced in 10,000 batches. However, ask a retailer how much money he makes selling an x86 mobo and then how many he would have to sell to stay in business.

ACube have priced the Sam to make a small profit for the few remaining resellers as well as for themselves and to start recovering R&D costs and hopefully planning for the next stage.

Bit of a catch-22 situation - if people don't buy the current offering, it will be difficult to develop the next one.

And has been said many times, x86 is not possible: (a) there is no license until legal battles are finally sorted and (b) porting to x86 would cost money that would probably not be recouped in sales. Porting to Mac would be great for some consumers, but wouldn't help the wider eco-system, ie hardware developers and Amiga-loyal retailers.

A £600 "hobby" purchase that will last 3 years equates to less than £4 per week - that's less than 2 pints of beer per week over here in the UK. Granted, for many that won't be worthwhile. Unfortunately, that's economics.

[Akiko]

Well said yoodoo.

[B00tDisk]

Not true.

Yes true.  I never said "Amigas have always cost more than PCs", I said they've always been expensive.  My 512k A500 with external floppy cost well over a thousand dollars (US) in 1989.

That is, by a mid-level consumer gauge, expensive.

[slayer]

It keeps the riff raff out LOL

I own 2 SAMs and I'll buy more...

Join the Club at a price or move along...

[klx300r]

But because i love the amiga so much  I will buy one at the end of the month (sam flex) ...

that's the Amiga spirit !..when was the last time any one bought a peecee becuase they 'loved' it :-) LOL

[klx300r]

It keeps the riff raff out LOL

I own 2 SAMs and I'll buy more...

Join the Club at a price or move along...

well said slayer!

[the_leander]

The SAM board costs about £400 depending on the version and speed. The rest of the £620 is the OS4 license (about £100) and for the rest of the system's hardware: case, drives etc.

Yes, pricey compared to commodity x86 hardware produced in 10,000 batches. However, ask a retailer how much money he makes selling an x86 mobo and then how many he would have to sell to stay in business.

The price you're quoting would pay for not one, but two fully kitted out quadcore desktops. The retailer might have to sell a lot of boxes to make it worthwhile, however, and this is key: He will have customers willing to plunk down that kind of cash for that sort of hardware.

There are maybe 5000 Amiga users left worldwide.

With the greatest of respect to all involved in SAM/OS4, I would have to strongly recommend getting a PC costing half as much and getting a copy of AmigaForever, which will run far more software much more quickly.

--edit--

@cv643d, no, I think you'll find most of us on this board are or at least were Amiga users, not "Amigans". Many of those self identified "Amigans" left this board many years ago in a huff to start in another place, which in turn helped perpetrate fraud. Some of the more insane ones then set up another board and have since been viewed by almost everyone else as a cancer.

[klx300r]

@cv643d, no, I think you'll find most of us on this board are or at least were Amiga users, not "Amigans". Many of those self identified "Amigans" left this board many years ago in a huff to start in another place, which in turn helped perpetrate fraud. Some of the more insane ones then set up another board and have since been viewed by almost everyone else as a cancer.

without starting a war :-) many of us here at Amiga.org still use our classic Amiga's and/or also new hardware running OS4.1 on a regular basis so that makes us all 'Amigans'.  

I don't understand the 'us' vs 'they' attitude ??

[slayer]

Look the_leader

Like I've said many times the people who want to use Modern AmigaOS Hardware are not interested in what makes sense from a perspective of a person like you... You can stay in Retro Amiga Wonderland if you like, amen to you...

AmigaOS is a living evolving piece of software it doesn't have to stay in an emulator like the C64 or anything else similair...

Your advise is only worth while to other people of your designation...

Like I've also stated Amiga Forums need to rethink why they fly the Amiga Flag... it isn't to accomodate what has become of the members and there mentality and outlook etc it is supposed to be PRO Amiga, NOT PRO Stay at Amiga OS3.9...

I'll be happy if the boards wanting to fall by the way side would just call itself something else, Members aren't members for life, not on Amiga Boards or anything else for that matter, they are members as long as they are interested and true to what the Board represents...

If Amiga.org for example truely thinks the New AmigaOS is not worth following or supporting then perhaps it should change it's name to reflect this...

Amiga as far as I'm concerned is a 'current' term, not a label open to a period in time...

Why do you think everyone coined the phrase classic Amiga... there's your answer...

Of course anyone who has loyalty to this site is likely going to say, who the hell am I and I can sod off if I didn't like it... the thing is I don't mind this site at all... but that doesn't mean I don't have a point of view when it comes right down to it...

And there is no sense arguing with me when you know I'm right... If you wanted to clarify something, what would you do?

Get a Bloody SAM, it is still FAR cheaper than what I paid for Amiga stuff in 1986...

What happened to the days when someone would spend a fortune on some Amiga HW and the thread would be like, oh I'm getting that too, or damn I can't afford that, but good on you!

Now it's you Dumb Ass or You are a Zealot etc etc... All you types of people who have given into the dollar or given up on the Amiga, need to move on... You're like lost spirits that can't rest and anyone with an Opinion against this, you think about what you are arguing for? There's another self truth... you're only fighting your older self...

[Piru]

@slayer

Everyone here is as welcome and worthy, regardless of their poison. Be it classic, emulation (sw or hw), AROS, MorphOS, or even NG amiga. Heck, we even welcome OS X, Linux and Windows discussion.

And BTW: Just because someone paid a ton of money for some HW 15-20 years ago doesn't mean the same prices should apply today. Things have evolved quite a bit since then, or at least should have.

[coldfish]

@slayer

You might want to re-read your own posts and then take a good long look in the mirror?

/lowers eyebrow.

[scifigeek]

Don't need the bestest, fastest motherboards out there, just need 3 cheap co-processors and wham!
Hardware multitasking, baby!
(We can dream, right?)

[scifigeek]

Then there's stuff like Pagestream, Hollywood.

Ah, Pagestream 2.2. I learned how powerful that was back in 1997; and it wasn't even new then!
To my eye, IMO, it was as good as Quark is *now*. (Though Quark has seen better days, most publishers switching to InDesign)

[Mightyzorlac]

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 I had to change my pants when I got the stuff home :roflmao:

Thankfully its got the newer type of baterry that does'nt leak all over the board. It was in practically mint condition and came with loads of games and other software on the HD,a monitor, keyboard all working in perfect condition. Ive been in heaven since lol as Ive been looking for one of these for years, so lucky the old guy had no clue as it belonged to his son who died last in Iraq and he was having a good clean out of his stuff..