The hard reality Hyperion are going to face here is that current patterns effect future trends. The trend is for $300 netbooks, $150 consoles, and low cost machines. Big Desktops sales are down and all my buddies would only spend $1200 or more on a KICK ASS laptop or Desktop for a highly specialzed business purpose...or a MAC
But Hyperion know all this and will price the machine for Amiga Enthusiasts who are prepared to pay for this. I hope that this X1000 will spawn a X500 with expansion capabilities. I think Hyperion will realize this just like Commodore did when they released the A1000.
These days it's almost impossible to compete with x86 on the desktop. There just isn't enough volume for PowerPC to drive the R&D necessary to create competitive chips for the desktop (and laptop) market. Apple realized this and switched to x86. If Hyperion wanted OS4 to be anything more than a niche OS for nostalgic hobbyists, they would head in the same direction.
There is some chance that ARM could gain a foothold in the low end market. They're starting to approach netbook class processing power, they're dirt cheap (considerably less than PowerPC chips with similar oomph aimed at the embedded market ) and they tend to have reasonably decent video hardware onboard (it seems most of the PowerPC based SoCs tend to be oriented at network hardware and thus don't have integrated video hardware). Even then, it's hard to say whether ARM will make it in the personal computer market (though it's doing just fine in the mobile device market obviously).
So anyway, I wouldn't expect an X500, or if there is one I wouldn't expect awesome price/performance. PowerPC desktop hardware is going to be a niche for the forseeable future and as a result it's going to be expensive for what you get.
Sorry for the negativity. It's cool that Hyperion is trying to keep the Amiga platform alive, but I think it's good to have realistic expectations.
