From: u3364521@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Lou Cavallo)
Newsgroups: aus.computers.amiga
Subject: Melbourne PC Show (Saturday)
Date: 17 Nov 92 11:54:08 +1100
Organization: I.A.E.S.R., Melbourne University

I was at the Home PC Show (Melb) on Saturday.  For what it is worth here are
some of my observations.

Yes, Maxwell's had a prototype Amiga 4000 at the show on Saturday.  This was
the A3400 that others have commented about.  According to Nigel from Maxwell
it had only arrived that morning.  I presume that there were no decent demos
running on it because they had not had the time to prepare any.   Did anyone
that went to the show on Sunday notice any better demonstrations of it?

As mentioned earlier, there was a file viewer running on it that showed some
pics, but in my personal opinion they did not have the presentation wow fac-
tor that the Atari Falcon did on the 17" screens.  The A3400 is a beta vers-
ion of the A4000.  The case it came in was ugly.  It didn't seem to quick to
me (based on dir commands to the IDE drive) and viewing a pic or two.  But I
was not really worried about that, as it was a beta machine I expected that.
I did like a couple of the enhancements to AmigaDos 3.0, e.g. locale support
for European languages.

The following is mostly what happened at Maxwell's stand.

I talked to the Australia Marketing Manager of CBM, Mark P...(damn, I forget
his surname, sorry).  He stated that he wasn't a computer type, he came from
JVC previously.  He told me that his aim is to sell boxes!  I mentioned that
I had seen Jim Dionne of CBM USA quoted as doing that for US Amiga sales.  I
think he was genuine, in fact he admitted to me that the reason A4000's are
scarce here in Oz is that Jim Dionne (CEO of CBM USA?) has grabbed 'em all!!

Perhaps this one time we are kicking CBM Oz when they are not at fault.

Mark confirmed the AUS$4795 price for the A4000, circa last week of December
but I was not savvy to any news of special deal regarding that price.  I did
not ask enough questions to guess there might be a special deal as some have
claimed Maxwell reps stated at the show.

Maxwell had a few specials, e.g. VXL accelerator (25MHz I think, no RAM) for
$459 (I think, sorry, I didn't get any price lists.)

I had a good look at the G-Lock s/w controllable genlock that Lex from Power
Peripherals was demonstrating at the Maxwell stand.  Also, Cinemorph was sh-
owing at Maxwell and at Computamart (I think that's there name).  I want it!
It's a $239 morphing program that produces some cool results.

I was quite pleased with the Amiga distributors stands.  CBM had a tiny sec-
tion of the central IBM/Apple/etc. stand (but then Apple and IBM had just as
small a stand/area.)

The most significant observation (IMHO) of the Saturday turnout?  Almost all
multimedia displays for the IBM systems had games going somewhere in a booth
whereas there were no(that I saw) games in the Amiga booths! The Amiga stuff
was heavy multimedia/authoring stuff.  The IBM stuff was game/presentation &
sound based stuff(some good stuff for kiddies & parents though, Encyclopedia
type programs, CD-ROMS stuff etc.)

But games was it from my point of view!  And they harp about the Amiga being
a games only machine!  {Sorry, one of my personal beefs I had to vent my own
bit of spleen on... :-)}

There were a lot of people there (it seemed to me) on Saturday.  Not quite a
rush as for some other shows I've been to.  I liked the show and I reckon it
was worth $6 (but not $9).  I'll go again next year.

And if Mark P. from CBM AUS has done what he said he'd do and *sells* Amigas
(well okay, he meant *any* CBM product, he tried to sell me a 486SX.  Nearly
did too!  :-)) then I'm going to do a jig in front of Maxwell's stand.  This
just might be a good year for CBM Aus if they are anything like their US kin.

:-)

yours truly,
Lou Cavallo.  (Assistant Programmer, IAESR, University of Melbourne)