Amiga HW price in a perspective

[amyren]

You think the SAM is to expensive?
Here are some facts to consider:
Average salery in US (source http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/AWI.html)

1986: 17,321; 1987: 18,426; 1988: 19,334; -----> 2006: 38,651; 2007: 40,405; 2008: 41,334
Numbers in US$
The statistics shows that the wages have more than doubled since the Amiga was in the position of selling lots of machines.

Now the prices for Amiga Hardware:
(1985) Amiga 1000: US$ 1,300
(1987) Amiga 2000: US$ 1,500
(1987) Amiga 500: £ 359.90 (about USD $600, todays rate)
(1990) Amiga 3000: US$ 4,100 (monitor incl.)
(1991) CBM CDTV: US$ 1000
(1992) Amiga 600: US$ 500
(1992) Amiga 4000: US$ 3,699

2009: Sam Flex complete Vento Bundle (acube): 675.60 EUR (about US$ 1000, today rate, incl VAT)

So given that the wages have doubled, you can compare the Sam with any of the mentioned old Amiga models, and you find that the Vento bundle is the cheapest of them all.

For the argument sake you could also add the fact that the average age of the target group have probably rised quite a bit. So there are more people in todays target group who actually have a decent job now than there was in 1987. Then many users got the Amiga founded by their own savings and some might get it founded by their parents.

Ok, I know that when the first Amigas was out, it was state of the art technology. But I still think that most users baught it for their own pleasure for the hobbist needs, rather than for buisness. And when we look back at the difficult years behind us, we all know that we cant expect to Amiga to be in front of the technology just over night.

So my point is this, Yes the SAM is expensive compared performance-vice to the PC's. But compared to the old days it is not, it just those damn PC's are sold in millions and because of that is dirt cheap.
I think if someone really wants an Amiga, they can afford to buy it. Its just a matter or priority.

[Crumb]

you seem to forget Pegasos2 G4/1Ghz which was released for less than 600Euros. It could be overclocked up to 1.25Ghz, runs both OS4.1 and MorphOS and was released more than 5 years ago.

Sam440 is expensive.

[itix]

I think if someone really wants an Amiga, they can afford to buy it. Its just a matter or priority.

So, are you saying that not so many want an Amiga?

[persia]

All of which has nothing to do with the price of tea in China.  You have to compare apples to apples.  US$1000 will buy you a lot of computer, multiple cores, gigahertz speeds, etc.  Sam's specs compared to what you could buy in an AMD or Intel system are a joke.  SAMs specs for a thousand US dollars look good in 1999, not 2009.

It's sort of like saying well yeah people should be able to afford a fifty US dollar cup of coffee when Starbucks is selling them for a fiver.  Add that to the fact that in Starbucks you can have your choice of flavours and additives whilst in your store you can only have rancid yak butter, and if your coffee cup has a hole in it be grateful there's a cup and we didn't pour it in your hand.

[Methuselas]

@ Persia

Excuse me!!!!


Some of us users here happen to *LIKE* rancid, yak butter in their coffee.......


*snort*

[mpiva]

It's sort of like saying well yeah people should be able to afford a fifty US dollar cup of coffee when Starbucks is selling them for a fiver.  Add that to the fact that in Starbucks you can have your choice of flavours and additives whilst in your store you can only have rancid yak butter, and if your coffee cup has a hole in it be grateful there's a cup and we didn't pour it in your hand.

  I disagree, I'd say it's more like: would you rather spend $5 to buy a well-brewed full flavoured coffee you can really savor but it comes in a flimsy plastic cup that's hard to hold without burning you hands, or would you rather spend $0.25 to buy some watered down insta-blend day-old coffee that comes in a nice thermally insullated, ergonomically moulded, spill-proof, thick cardboard cup?

  Personally I care more about the taste of the coffee (OS) than the cup (hardware).

[countzero]

nice try, but you fail to include the fact that the price of an average home computing system has fallen rock bottom in all those years in your analysis. :hammer:

amiga bundle may be expensive or not, there're just so many alternatives which do much more at a much lower price ... :afro:

[B00tDisk]

nice try, but you fail to include the fact that the price of an average home computing system has fallen rock bottom in all those years in your analysis. :hammer:

amiga bundle may be expensive or not, there're just so many alternatives which do much more at a much lower price ... :afro:

Just so!

Three of these for the price of a cased Sam Flex; and each comes with an OS.  Soooo...one you can have XP on, one you can probably hack OSX onto, and a third for Linux/AROS/Amithlon.  All not much bigger than a paperback book.

Or buy a single and multi-boot to all of those; it comes with a 160gb hard drive...

Yeah I know which I'd pick if those were my choices.

[mpiva]

@ countzero

  A basic rule of literacy is that ALL analogies break down when you try to extrapolate them too far.  Market trends for coffee could never be used as an analogy for market trends for computers.  First of all, there are infinitely more blends of coffee to choose from then there are OS's to choose from.  And don't blame me for choosing a bad analogy, persia chose the analogy, I just tried to improve it. Despite your critism, I still think my analogy is better then persia's.

[B00tDisk]

@ countzero

  A basic rule of literacy is that ALL analogies break down when you try to extrapolate them too far.  Market trends for coffee could never be used as an analogy for market trends for computers.  First of all, there are infinitely more blends of coffee to choose from then there are OS's to choose from.  And don't blame me for choosing a bad analogy, persia chose the analogy, I just tried to improve it. Despite your critism, I still think my analogy is better then persia's.

Fortunately, thanks to the choice of OS's out there, I can get both a good cup and good coffee (to continue your analogy).  OSX, Windows of just about any stripe (2000, XP, Vista, 7), AROS, Linuxes galore...

The Amiga Cup holds Amiga Coffee, nothing else (except maybe the occasional shot of Linux Flavoring).

[recidivist]

Sorry,but thses types of justifications for high prices are bogus.

You cannot ignore all the other factors like price and availabilty of competing  systems and new developments.Or higher taxes and fuel costs.

I 've seen the same  misuse of logic directed at ham radio operator regarding radio prices.

It is stunningly irrelevant what any item cost twenty years or days ago if there is a new alternative that takes its place and costs less or is more convenient.

[persia]

The point being that you have underpowered over priced hardware compared with the rest of the World and in return you choice of software is extremely limited and the OS lacks basic things like memory protection.  

SO in the end you pay much more and get much less in return.  On a simple dollar based performance comparison with other computers on the market (MS Windows, Mac OS, Linux,BSD, Haiku, etc) the Sam board quite frankly stinks.  

Of course the Amiga market is not the general public, it's a small group of collectors, so the dollar performace ratios don't matter as much, if at all.  Indeed, a high price for low performance hardware is an excellent gatekeeper to keep the hoy polloy out. Nobody is going to buy a SAM board based on a rational decision, thereby making the price the perfect way to restrict membership in the club.

It also helps to rationalise why nobody from the general public are buying them.  A market priced Amiga not selling would leave only one explanation, there's no hidden millions of people out there waiting for it.  That would shatter the hopes and dreams of many Amigans.  Better to keep the price up and maintain the myth.

[Gulliver]

It is just insane to try to justify your claims:
An A1000 was $1300 in 1985 and was the best and most modern technology when released, it was a full computer, The SAM, in 2009 is just a motherboard, and the rest, well you all know...
If you want to justify you payed too much for SAM, then do it just by saying: it is what i like, and i bought  just for the expensive geekness it represents, or something along the lines, but please dont ever try to fool anyone over here by saying SAM is worth its $$$, because no, you cant.
If you want a new Amiga-like enviroment at a reasonable price you could:
-Buy a Pegasos and install AmigaOS4.1
-Buy a Macmini and install MorphOS 2.4
-Buy a PC and install AROS

But never dare to suggest a SAM is reasonable priced!

[mikeymike]

All of which has nothing to do with the price of tea in China.  You have to compare apples to apples.  US$1000 will buy you a lot of computer, multiple cores, gigahertz speeds, etc.  Sam's specs compared to what you could buy in an AMD or Intel system are a joke.  SAMs specs for a thousand US dollars look good in 1999, not 2009.

Adding to this, the original poster should factor in that at least some of those Amigas were considered cutting edge (at least in some respects) for their time.  I'm wondering how a sam would compare performance/featureset-wise to to an Intel Atom netbook, let alone the mainstream.

[zylesea]

The price of a Sam is easy:
In computing terms, i. e. MIPS/$€#?, the Sam is insanely expensive. But if you think that AOS4 (and not other Amiga flavour!) is your way and you cannot get hold of a Peg2 or want a brand new piece of hardware, then you have not much of a choice. These ppl probably shoudn't complain, they are free to chose from other alternatives.
But since the general user is not that much iinteresred n AmigaOS 4 it s fair to say, that the Sam is - generally spoken - a piece of  rather old fashioned overpriced silicon.
Everyone is free to decide, I decided myself against buying a SAM (there is no benefit), I have enough and faster ppc maschines.