Amiga HW price in a perspective

[dougal]

Lets put our cards on the table here and just say it as it is..... The Sam motherboard IS extremely overpriced and extremely under powered .

Fine , everyone is free to spend their money on what they like , but there is absolutely no way to justify the price of the Sam motherboard and I for one would never buy it .

Lets be honest here , its not like its C= Amiga hardware or anything , its just a stupidly overpriced and outdated motherboard which the developers of Amiga OS 4 decided to work with . The motherboard has no value whatsoever .

[coldfish]

Wow! You know the Amiga platform is prettymuch toast when 9 out of 10 posts on an Amiga forum defend PC hardware over Amiga(ish) flavours.

To those who say "If you dont like it, dont buy it..."

...people aren't, that's THE* problem.

*platforms future; userbase growth, profitability, developer support, etc.

[dougal]

I think we can all agree that if for the cost we were offered a fast , modern and complete system* instead of just an outdated motherboard , then many more people would be buying new Amiga hardware .

* When i say complete system , i mean something that is well presented , just like an A3000 or A4000 was . Its own case (Amiga branded , Not a standard Mini ATX) , an Amiga branded keyboard , printed manuals , etc..

[persia]

If AmigaOS ran on X86 you'd get more people trying it for sure.  You wouldn't have to run out and buy special hardware just to try the OS.  You could even run it in a VirtualBox/VMWare/Parallels window.  €1000 just to try, on a 1999 spec computer that can't run any other OS!

[jorkany]

You think the SAM is to expensive?

I thought this was going to be a thread about Amiga HW.

[net01s]

Well, you can get a Lada or you can get Mercedes... both doing the same work, but in one you are feeling home... in the other not. But that is a personal decision.

[dammy]

-Buy a PC and install AROS

Or go dumpster diving for a AROS box.  Couple of years ago we did a poll on AROS-Exec.org on what speed the average box found thrown away was more then enough for AROS.  Speed that up by two years, your probably finding 1.5GHz to 2GHz in the trash now.

[persia]

Ah, but a Mercedes will get you comfortable cruising speeds well in excess of 200 Km/hr, you get what you pay for in a Mercedes.  A Sam board is more a Trabant at a Mercedes price...

Well, you can get a Lada or you can get Mercedes... both doing the same work, but in one you are feeling home... in the other not. But that is a personal decision.

[Hell Labs]

Just thought id mention:

G4 Mac minis are £50-150, and supported by morphOS now. eMac Support is also in the works, and those are better machines than the mac mini by miles AND much cheaper still.

Why bother even arguing over the price of amiga hardware now? The best modern amigas are now the cheapest of the lot, and there's no point in dropping a fortune on a SAM or second hand A1 when you can get this. Hell, i'm actually worried for the OS4 devs because their market has just been wiped out overnight, they need to release fro the apple hardware AND FAST - or else they'll be having an imagination christmas.

[justthatgood]

Grr, I'm sorry but the prices of the Amiga hardware are completely insane. I'm not sure even if I did have the money I would end up spending the money on that stuff anymore. I guess when I used to have a really cushy job that I made a lot of money in I would have. Not anymore. The poverty that 5 years have shown me tells me that I need more performance bang for my buck. Screw novelty, it's all about the here and now.

[motrucker]

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.

Interesting bunch of non relevant ideas.  Try comparing the price to other motherboards that are available NOW. AND look at how old most of technology on the SAM truly is!

[Hell Labs]

Grr, I'm sorry but the prices of the Amiga hardware are completely insane. I'm not sure even if I did have the money I would end up spending the money on that stuff anymore. I guess when I used to have a really cushy job that I made a lot of money in I would have. Not anymore. The poverty that 5 years have shown me tells me that I need more performance bang for my buck. Screw novelty, it's all about the here and now.

This. you might get a slightly-too-expensive deal on ebay or elsewhere IF YOU ARE LUCKY. Unlucky? bend over boy, you gonna pay £160 for 40mhz.

Seriously, boycott that nonsense. You wanna buy amigas? you got two sensible choices:

buy a 500 or 1200 for as cheap as you can get (£30 or so), use it for games and periot software.
buy a mac mini and run MorphOS.


THERE. ARE. NO. OTHER. SANE. OPTIONS.:madashell:

[tone007]

eMac Support is also in the works, and those are better machines than the mac mini by miles

eMacs aren't really all that much better than MacMinis, they're pretty close.  The lack of 50lbs of CRT makes the Mini a better choice IMO, and I have a few eMacs and Minis here.

The eMacs definitely are cheaper when you can find them, though.

edit: have to say, though, my favorites are the G4 iMacs.  LCD on a stick in a gumdrop.

[persia]

Yeah, I love the lampshade ones.  You can paint the bottom part in a red/white chequered pattern and call it a boing ball!

eMacs aren't really all that much better than MacMinis, they're pretty close.  The lack of 50lbs of CRT makes the Mini a better choice IMO, and I have a few eMacs and Minis here.

The eMacs definitely are cheaper when you can find them, though.

edit: have to say, though, my favorites are the G4 iMacs.  LCD on a stick in a gumdrop.

[amigadave]

Yeah, I love the lampshade ones.  You can paint the bottom part in a red/white chequered pattern and call it a boing ball!

I thought the same thing, but IIRC, when I was checking which Macs might have similar specs to the MacMini G4, I think the lampshade iMacs did not have Radeon graphics cards, which would rule them out from running MorphOS at any time in the near future (unless someone has been working on other graphics drivers without telling anyone about them).

[tone007]

Well, heck's whistles.  Good thing I had no MorphOS aspirations.