From: terjem@stud.cs.uit.no (Terje Normann Marthinussen)
Subject: Re: A4000/EC030 confirmed
Organization: University of Tromsoe
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 23:33:28 GMT

In article <1993Jan23.144146.17409@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au>, davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn) writes:
>In article <C1A1FM.Bws@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan22.180342.27475W@viper.edb.tih.no> jorni@edb.tih.no writes:
>>>Commodore in Norway has more or less confermed the availability of
>>>an Amiga 4000 with a 68EC030, 4MB ram and an 85 MB harddisk.
>>>
>>>The price was the biggest shock of them all: NOK 14500,- incl. tax.
>>>
>>>That translates to about $1900-$2000 with an exchange rate of 
>>>approximately 6.5-7.
>>>
>>>Release (in Norway): Febr. 15th.
>>>
>>>This might not be too cheap in the US, but it sure caused quite a 
>>>stir here in Norway!
>>
>>   If the price is true, that would still leave a more than $1500 gap in
>>Commodore's product line, between the A1200 and the EC030-based A4000.  
>
>US$2000 in Norway is not the same thing as $2000 in the US.  :-)
>
>To get an idea of the US price of the A4000/EC30, you'd need to know how
>much A4000/040s cost in Norway, then scale appropriately.  My guess is that
>the US price would be well under $2000, given the power-up pricing of the
>A4000/040.

First of all lets recalculate the Norwegian price of the A4000/EC30 from 
14500.- incl. sales tax.

This price includes the Norwegian sales tax of 22% (it was just raised from
20% because of the "bad"(??????) economical situation Norway is in (which
is, as far as I know, better than most countries in Europe....)).

Ok, so the price without 22% tax is 14500/1.22=11885.-
If I'm not totally wrong then the exchange rate today should be approx. 6.8
which makes the US price $1747.

Well, if anyone would like to compare, then the "official" price on the A4000 is 
NOK 24500.- inkl. tax.
That will make it NOK 20081.- without tax and therefore $2953!
Well, the A4000 is sold around here for approx. NOK 22500.- inkl. tax.
That will make it a street price of NOK 18360 or $2700......!!!

Hmm.... now lets look a bit closer on this... errr... phenomena....
At the end of November the pressure on the Swedish Krone got so high that
Sweden couldn't substain it anymore. So the Swedish Krone was set free from 
ecu (which is a currency unit which most European countries has locked it's 
exchange rate to, including up til now Sweden and Norway). The effect of this was
more or less the same as a devaluation.
Unfortunately, Norway's economical situation is very dependent on Sweden as 
Sweden is one of our neighbours and also probably the country which is most 
important for our foreign trade.

Well, following the "devaluation" of the Swedish Krone a great pressure was put
on the Norwegian Krone (NOK). After 1.5 weeks the situation seemed to stabilize
when suddenly the Deutsche Mark (DEM) came under pressure.

Well, the effect in Norway was quite big, NOK was after a short but hopeless
struggle from the Norwegian State Bank set free from ecu.

During the next few days NOK was reduced in value to US$ from approx 6.0 to 
somewhere around 6.9. But then again it stopped and against all advices from 
finacial advisors (except the Norweigan Government which had said that the 
NOK was solid enough to keep it's current exchange rate, and of course myself
which agreed with them that the whole situation was a result of a massive
speculation in the international marked) it began to raise again. Well, NOK 
is still weak compared with it's value one month ago, but it's still climbing 
slowly against it's old exchange rate.


Well, there's what's happened to the Norwegian Krone lately.

As far as I know C= Norway hasn't adjusted their prices after the Norwegian 
currency fell in value, so therefore as far as I can see Computers are quite cheap
here now.

On the other side I can't see how C= could be able to adjust their prices either.
None of the most popular clone retailers has, on the contrary they have lowered
their prices. I should be able to get an 486 66Mhz EISA "quality" clone with 8MB 
ram and some 200MB disk for about the same price as an A4000 and I think that
price should include a monitor as well.

Well, I would like to thank C= Norway for their most increadibly big price cuts 
the last year. In Mars-April last year I tried to compare the prices of A3000
in different countries. Well at that time I could buy a one week vacation to the
US, buy myself an A3000 there, and still have money left for a couple
of nights at the town, for what one A3000 would cost me in Norway....

Well, that all changed when C= Norway got a new leader which for a long time 
had been an important person in the Norwegian Amiga community.

Currently A4000 are selling much faster than C= is able to deliver them here
and I've also head from retailers that customers are buying A1200 even though 
it's 2 weeks before the first shipment will arrive here!

Well, sorry this got a kind of long and probably boring.
I just hope that my English didn't get to bad (I'm not used to write about
financial matters in English :).


Terje Marthinussen
terjem@stud.cs.uit.no


>
>>Commodore really needs to develop a system that would be positioned in between
>>the A1200 and the cheapest A4000; something like an A1200 with an 'EC030, '882,
>>and a detached keyboard would be nice.
>
>Sounds good, although I'd prefer a system with an MMU.  I'd also like slots
>and room for internal drives in a midrange system.  Sounds like I've just
>described an A4000....  Really, what could you cut out of an A4000 to make a
>midrange system, while retaining the detatched keyboard/cpu box design?  It
>doesn't even have a SCSI interface built in, that could be removed from the
>design.  It seems to me that the A4000 IS the mid-range AGA system.
>
>
>> However, Commodore has a history of
>>not marketing mid-range systems, so I don't think Commodore will start
>>marketing one now.
>
>True enough.  The competition's greatest in the middle - it's hardest for
>them there.  Commodore can compete well at the low end with the A1200, while
>the high end isn't too price sensitive - people know what they want, and they
>buy it.  In the mid-range, I don't know how anything could ever compete with
>current 486 pricing.
>
>>---
>>| Marc Barrett -MB- |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
>
>-- 
>David Meiklejohn (davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au)
> - PC's, Unix, and networks by day, Amigas by night...
>Currently residing in Mareeba, Far North Queensland, Australia
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy