drwho:
"gonvernment surplus" 
Which government agency here in the states uses Amiga's???
In North America lots of government agencies jumped at the chance to get away from 3/4" U-matic video based editings systems that were cuts only, had no character generators, and in somecases couldn't even handle color well, or at all. Many such systems were falling apart anyway.
They bought a lot of A2000 Video Toaster systems for tape based editing systems like Ami-Link. In the Kansas City area I think the Police Academy had one. IIRC, the main prison in Jefferson City had a Toaster based studio for state agency production.
How they were used depended on who got assigned the work of using them. I got to play with one agency's NewTek Toaster turn-key system. It was basically a re-branded KS 1.3 A2000HD. I'm not even sure if it had a meg-a-chip upgrade. It booted directly to the Switcher. They did not even know that the Workbench existed until I showed them how to exit the Toaster interface. (Score one for the C= brain trust.) That agency had nobody local who knew video locally. They shipped it out of state to someone who could use it.
My region of Social Security was ready for the video revolution. (Several other of our reagions have/had Toasters, as well.) My late boss bought an A2000 before they were even released. We used it with a Super-Gen, plus Deluxe Paint for graphics, and as a CG, with a 3/4 editing system. When we could we bought an A3000T with Toaster and Ami-Link editor. Several years we added an A4000T Toaster/Flyer system, an an A4000D Toaster unit. I still use at least one of the systems on a weekly basis for one thing, or another. How many operations, of any kind, still get useful work out of a desktop computer purchased in 1987?
