From: efp90@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Pritchard EF)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: A1200 at Future Entertainment Show (UK)
Date: 10 Nov 92 19:22:19 GMT

Well, I went to the FES on Saturday: they should have renamed it the
Commodore Amiga Show!!!

Nintendo and Segas stalls were dwarfed by the massive Commodore
Stall-complete with hands-on demonstrations of A600 A1200 A3000 A4000
and some CBM-PClones, and a Commodore `Technical Support' stand (with
some very disinterested and unhelpful CBM personnel may I add) and a
User Group Stand (who were much more polite).

Commodore had completely covered the busy corridor between Earls Court
1 and 2 with advertizing (Better Graphics Better Sound Better Get One
etc.) and had loads of Sony TVs playing the new Amiga Advert (which
was fine until I got stuck in the corridor for half an hour during
which my advertizing-response circuits overloaded - Anyone noticed
that the guy in the ad seems to have a ROM switcher? If not then why
is he using v1.3 under some shots and 2.0 under others??? :-)

Anyhow, the A1200 was in full effect. I truly estimate that about 1 in
8 people there bought one during the show. There were loads of people
walking about with the little A1200 box under their arms. Most stalls
had them at \pounds 399, but some smaller dealers were retailing for
\pounds 359. Many dealers had sold out by the end of the day...

I searched around to see if I could find a cheap 2.5" IDE drive,
without success. Power Computing had 85MB drives for \pounds 230, and
this was the mode size and price. One had drives which he claimed were
CBM drives which had been liberated from PC-10 CBM machines... 3.5"
drives were alot cheeper, so there was either a conspiracy on, or 2.5"
drives really are that more expensive. One dealer had searched many
Hardware Dealers for his drive (he ordered a 85Mb drive and they
accidently sent him a 150Mb drive, he didn't complain!!). Apparently,
the A1200 comes without any hard disk install software, so he had to
install his in an A600, then copy over WB3.

Acorn (US people won't even have heard of them) and Atari (who are
they?) weren't even there, although a few dealers (very few) were
selling products for them.

Amiga Format and their group Future Publishing had a massive stall
with a TV-Bank were they were letting crowd members play Amiga Games.
They also had a rather load stall were they were inviting questions on
the Amiga (typical c.s.a. stuff!) and cutting people down with
informed answers.

The most impressive things I saw at the show was a A4000 running a
Madonna video in a window on workbench (!!), and a demonstration of
Digita Wordsworth 2 (get it when it comes out, it is bloody
brilliant!)

Commodore `leaked' info on the forthcoming A4000/030 (a 68030 based
A4000) on it's tech. info sheet. So all those
not-quite-so-high-but-quite-high-actually-thankyou end users can go
arrange their personal loans now!!!


All in all it was a really great show for Commodore, and for Commodore
retailers...


----

E.F.Pritchard                       ///
efp90@uk.ac.soton.ecs           \\\/// Amiga     I seriously need something
University of Southampton        \xx/            to go on this side of my
England.                                         signature, any ideas?


 
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