Looking at the Sam board prices just shows that Acube are charging massively. Why that actually is, may be debatable. But it isn't because the ppcs are so damn pretty expensive.
Unfortnately it is not that easy to obtain price quotes for the 460 (last price I found was about 100 US$ in small quantities, but it wasn't precisely the model Acube is using. Probaly that price is a good guess anyway). And if the 460 was that expensive then the big qestion is: why on earth use that chip when there are enough other ppc chips available?
Avnet has 1GHz 460ex chips for just over US$100. Slower versions go as low as about $75.
Go to
http://www.avnet.com and search for 460ex, click on processors category in results.
If 460ex is expensive, then the only alternatives are lower performance than that. Many of us want to go in the positive direction, not backwards. Yes, even if that's more expensive.
It's all a bunch of tradeoffs. Someone has enforced a restriction to PowerPC. Like it or not, it's there for OS4. Don't like it, don't use OS4. If you want OS4, and some of us do, how do we best live within that restriction? Trying to keep price as low as is practical for a business and keeping performance where users want it can be tricky in a nanoscopic market like this. It's not just the parts that create cost, don't forget the NRE. The smaller your market, the fewer to spread that cost to, and the higher each customer pays toward it. Sucks to be us... But put out a high performance PPC laptop for OS4, and I'll find a way to pay for one. If I were designing it, my own personal priorities place performance and modern features as more important than low price.
