From: davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au (David Meiklejohn)
Subject: Re: Upgrade Amiga OR buy 486??
Organization: Qld Dept Primary Industries
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 14:07:56 GMT

In article <1992Jul24.140705.10734@digi.lonestar.org> ajahn@digi.lonestar.org (Alfredo Jahn) writes:
>I realize I will probably be flamed for the following...

But anyone who does is surely an idiot, so you can safely ignore them.

>I came into the Amiga arena early in the game. I bought my 2000 in 1986-87?
>(when it first came out). Even though there wasn't much software available 
>at the time, I knew it was only a matter of time 'til the rest of the world 
>believed as I did - "the PC is dead - long live the Amiga; a "real" processor
>with a "real" OS!!"  

I think you were a little naive to have believed that.  When I bought my
(first) Amiga in '86, I never expected it to take over the world.  I did expect
it to be recognised as a viable third platform (to PC and Mac), and that more
major applications would have been ported.  I'm disappointed that that never
happened, but it has in fact sold about as well as I ever expected.  The fact
that it's still around six years later suggests that it has been a success of
sorts, in its own way.

>I still have the stock 7.4 MHZ 68000, a nice big hard drive (210 Meg), the
>old Sony monitor/TV, 5 Meg of RAM, a good C compiler, PageStream2.2 and some 
>other misc. packages. This was a hell of a system in '87, but today its a dog...

That's true of pretty much any system bought in 1987.

>So what do I do?  A new monitor?, flicker-fixer?, '030 or '040 accelerator 
>card?, etc.? How much will that cost me?  A lot, thats how much!  
>
>So here is my dilemma... Do I upgrade (with that old 4.x mother board) or take 
>the same dollars and get a whole new (50MHZ 486) machine (where I can run UNIX 
>(for free) and/or OS/2).

Here's the classic dilemma facing so many of us.  Do we keep putting money into
our current Amigas, or do we cut our losses and bail out?  I've decided not to
spend any more money on my A2000 - I've been thinking about buying the 2632 ram
board for my 2630, and getting a bigger hard drive, but it could be a big waste
of money, although the HD is easily transferrable.  I'm waiting to see what
Commodore come up with this year.  I want an 040-based machine with at least
the AA chipset.  If they sell that machine at a suitable price (a little more
than the A3000 is now), I'll buy one.  If an A4000 doesn't eventuate, I'm
selling the A2000 and buying a 486, with OS/2.  I'd keep the A1000 to play
games on, and for old times sake.

>The idea of getting a PC makes my stomach turn. And if 
>any of my co-workers find out - after so many years of PC bashing, I could risk
>being lynched! {:-/

Same here.  I'm kind of known as an Amiga fanatic at work.  It would be hard to
live down.

>  I just hate the idea 
>of throwing any more money into that old box. I'm also a little worried about 
>the future of this machine; I mean, C= doesn't seem to be doing any more 
>marketing than it did 5 years ago... If it weren't for companies like NewTek 
>and GVP, we would really be in trouble.

The Amiga's survived OK without marketing - what we need are machines which are
sellable.  The A600HD will sell fairly well in Australia at its current price,
based on word of mouth alone - they won't need to market it.  That doesn't
help me, though - I want an A4000, and they have five months to sell me one.

>So, what do you net.amiga.experts recommend?  (I don't even want to ask the 
>MS-DOS gang). Please be honest.

I'm no expert, but you could do what I'm doing.  There have been some very
promising noises about new machines.  I'm giving them time to see what
actually comes out, but I'm not waiting forever.


-- 

David Meiklejohn                  | Internet : davidme@qdpii.comp.qdpi.oz.au
Computer Systems Officer, QDPI    | Fax      : +61 70 92 3593
Mareeba, Australia                | Voice    : +61 70 92 1555