@Zylesea

Quote:

You have strange prices in Norway... If I compare the price of a AmigaOneX500 at Vesalia with the offerings of e.g. Dell I get this: A1X500 incl. 2 GB RAM, 1066 MHz SoC, 500GB SATA and AOS4.1: 1044,90 EUR (Vesalia). Dell: Inspiron 620 incl. Core i5 2.9 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 1000GB SATA, NVidia GT530 1 GB Win7 home premium: 499 EUR. And it is clear that the Inspiron wipes the floor with the A1X500 powerwise. Of course it is not precisely fair to compare a mass market product with a homeopathic one, but it is also just wrong to say the A1X500 wouldn't be expensive. It is expensive. pretty expensive to be precise.

Apples and Bananas isn`t fair comparison, yes its clear Dell offers more horsepower then SAM 460 but it doesn`t include AmigaOS and mouse (don`t forget OS is at least 100 euros out of price)

Fair comparison would be similar specs Mac + MacOS X + Mac Office vs Branded PC + Ultimate Win7 + MS Office and it would show up Mac is expensive in hardware and PC in software.

Also, the PC hardware is manufactured for "single year sale" in mass quantities while SAM`s have to sell for years, returning investment. It took couple years of SAM 440 sales to make SAM 460 possible. R&D and production are simply made by different laws, its not only CPU arhitecture (if PPC desktops had mass market, it could go down) that is limit. In such choices, its better something (pricy, no doubt, especially for countries in development) then nothing, which was the situation for quite few years.

Likewise Polish friend explained there was time it took half year salary in East Europe to buy Amiga, now they can do it in 2 month salary, for some people its even cheaper it used to be in 90s. Real thing is how much you desire it and you are willing to buy it, like a lot of brands still have high price category and small market there, even no doubt, everyone is trying to lower the bar.

When Peg2 was avail, its comparison to prices of that days PC offer probably would be quite similar but people used to get it to run MOS.

Off course X500 is expensive for todays PC hardware prices (which also demand investement almost every year, unlike Amiga) and its likely all OS4 hardware would do so. Efika was nice cheap target (with bit more RAM and Radeon), but it simply didn`t live on

In the end its interesting to see OS4 users bite the teeth and get it,
while usualy those who don`t want to use it complain over the price as OS negative feature. True, if price was lower it would be acessable to more people (like Amiga used to be also all over East Europe or Latin America) but that is not the only point,

Currently more usable software would be a real thing, since hardware exists and its availiable. Next phase would be lower end AmigaOS. With 3D card utilization and JIT enabled UAE would SAM 500Mhz, Efika like machine with 512MB RAM be enough horsepower considering OS works on PPC expanded Classics?

Last edited by vox on 17-Oct-2011 at 01:16 PM.
Last edited by vox on 17-Oct-2011 at 09:48 AM.
Last edited by vox on 17-Oct-2011 at 09:46 AM.

_________________
Future Acube and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionals. Learn it harder way!

@vox

Quote:

vox wrote: When Peg2 was avail, its comparison to prices of that days PC offer probably would be quite similar but people used to get it to run MIOS.

Actually no. When Peg2s were available for 300-500Euro they were not also much cheaper as the SAMs today, they also compared quite better to the PCs of that time (which in turn were more expensive than those of today).

It still wasn't competetive in terms of pure specs, but it was much much closer than the SAMs (and X1000) are today.

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@K-L

Quote:

Ben Herman don't sell hardware, nor Hyperion, they only produce software.

So the question also be, when will they partner with a company to produce cheap hardware?

Opposing the argument that PPC is no more, from a technically minded member of my Amiga group I keep hearing that there are PPC reference boards out there, and they are a lot cheaper than what ACube and AEON are producing. And if another company can design and produce a reference board, with them only providing the firmware. then this makes valid point. Hyperion haven't designed firmware or a proper Amiga kickstart to boot the X1000,, they've just modded what was running on the boards, and the thing still costa a heap!

The Fixstars quad core 2.5Hgz PPC for $1,500 US. Now that's a missed oppertunity! I said it before, but they'd be better off buying a slab of those machines and reworking them for OS4. Getting companies to design and manufacture a machine just makes this situation worse.

None of the NG Amiga machimes so far even have a firmware that can act like the Amiga 1000. That is the closest match. That could display an image on screen in the space it had then loaded kickstart off disk. Loading kickstart off disk, sound familar?

I believe that we shouldn't look at price alone, but at price/performance ratio instead. "Performance" for me is a catch-all phrase that basically mean "what I can actually do with a given hardware?" but also "does this product offer good value for money?".

Problem is, the true strenght of the Amiga never, ever lied (except very small niche in 3D and video related applications, even in business environments) in its high-end models. Amiga basically dominated thanks to the A500s, and later, partly, to the A1200s (the latter especially was IMHO the "perfect" low-end Amiga, thanks to its easier expandability compared to the A500).

During late '80s/early '90s an A500/A1200 was one thing. But what about now? I mean, are current Amiga computers really comparable, feature-wise?

Well, I don't think so.

IMHO nowadays an OS4 machine is a totally different beast: HW is far from being cutting edge, commercial games (I mean the "big ones" that set charts on fire back then) are non-existant, and productivity software is largely based on ports from other, more popular platforms. And that's exactly when things get tricky for me.

Don't misunderstand me: AmigaOS is still, and by far, my favourite operating system. But it doesn't make the difference to me, not anymore: I don't want to spend (lots of?) money on custom hardware for, basically, the OS alone.

But... I would happily buy a licensed, "official" OS4 port for any other popular HW platform, I'd say I'd pay up to 150/200€. Please note that I am aware of previous discussions about this issue, particularly the "OS4 on x86 HW" so I'm not even arguing on whether it is actually possibile and/or economically viable or not. Neither I am discussing about topics like "engineering costs for custom HW", "economies of scale", and so on: I know about all of this and I understand the difficulties.

I'm just painting an ideal scenario within certain constraints, something I feel would really give the community a concrete chance to expand its userbase: by going back as much as possible (custom hw would be great, but not very realistic in current gaming console-centric market) to where it was most successful, the low-end, great price/performance ratio. Something that sadly no current Amiga branded product can offer, at least from the humble point of view of a former "advanced" (it was basically my everyday home computer, not just a gaming machine) Amiga user.

@Daytona675x

Quote:

An AmigaOne500 is almost exactly as affordable as an Amiga 500 was.

This is plain nonsense. You are comparing two prices without considering any external context. Like it or not, it's the context which makes things more or less 'affordable', not talking about making them 'competitive'.

An Amiga 500 back to 1987 had a very astounding price/performance ratio, and was considered a hi-end home computer (or call it a very low end workstation). Competition was composed by Atari ST on the same area, Commodore 64 on the low end market and by awful 386/486 PCs on the hi-end market, not counting the Mac and all other workstation options which were out of competition at the time. Moreover, price for the Amiga 500 was (at least in Italy) around £1.000.000 (£ == italian liras), while average monthly income was about £1.600.000. These prices, in euros, would be respectively about 500 and 800 (more or less). You had to spend about 70% of your monthly income to get one.

An AmigaOne 500 costs exactly € 1032 (including italian VAT), while average monthly income is still around € 1200 (according to Ocse) for a single person. This means average Mario would work barely enough for a month to afford it. Not counting that today the AmigaOne 500 is considered an already obsolete piece of hardware, performance wise, and that the price/performance ratio is something we should compute in a Lilliput-like scale. So the price is absolutely not the same. Maybe on other countries it might be, but not in every place of the world.

What's affordable anyway? $1000 is something a moderately successful human being can afford to invest in something he loves (- in modern countries that is - while it would be too much in a third world country).

All in all, it all depends on weather or not you REALLY want it, granted, there will always be evangelizers of other flavors advocating (with fake impartiality) that you should not pay those money no matter what, but as long as you don't have the same paradigm on offer for a cheaper price elsewhere it's a no go.

To be more specific, I love the "Amiga operating system running on HW specifically made for it" paradigm, and no alternative, for how cheap it may be, gives me the same intellectual satisfaction.
If you are like me, save some money and get an AmigaOne 500 or same some more to get an AmigaOne X1000, otherwise choose a cheaper flavor, I don't see the fuss about it.

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@Kronos

Quote:

Actually no. When Peg2s were available for 300-500Euro they were not also much cheaper as the SAMs today, they also compared quite better to the PCs of that time (which in turn were more expensive than those of today). It still wasn't competetive in terms of pure specs, but it was much much closer than the SAMs (and X1000) are today.

Well, G3/G4 processors are better then AMCC`s integrated solutions, no doubt.
In these terms even older AmigaOne boards offer better performance in pure CPU terms (not in GFX/HDD/mem).

But pricing was similar (300-500 eur for plain board + 100 euros for MOS).

Efika was only cheap PPC board ever, and sold quite shortly, sad.

There is no comparison board for X1000.

The same points of "x86 criticism" (price/performance) was present

SAM boards are not best choice, but even at this moment are only one avail.
And in terms of OS4 performance - they are not that bad, with room to improve
(software optimization, gfx chip utilization ...) and that should be most important.

_________________
Future Acube and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionals. Learn it harder way!

@Hypex

Quote:

So the question also be, when will they partner with a company to produce cheap hardware?

And of course such companies are big players: Dell, Asus, Acer....etc.
So the discussions would go like this:

Hyperion: I would like to partner with you.
Bigplayer: You need to purchase one million unit each year.
Hyperion: Well, can't we?....
Bigplayer: You need to purchase one million unit each year.

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

omg. why insist on something that is not going to be either way. be it objective reasons or politics os4 hardware costs what it costs, take it or leave it, like others do. and they do, some people are buying sams for whatever they cost. of course it isnt going to create any significant userbase anymore. but did cheap and affordable hardware like used macs or x86 contributed to any more success of aros or mos? it is doubtful. hence apparently the choice of price politics. it is better to sell few units for more than do not sell many units for a penny. what a wonder.

@paolone
Quote:

AmigaOne 500 is considered an already obsolete piece of hardware, performance wise

? For OS4.x the AmigaOne X500 is one of the most advanced pieces of hardware available at the moment.
And being a niche product you have to pay the price. Interesting enough you seem to forget that small fact while saying I'd
Quote:

compare two prices without considering any external context.

... Looks like you are forgetting some context here...

Quote:

So the price is absolutely not the same. Maybe on other countries it might be, but not in every place of the world.

May well be. That's the reason why I explicitely talked about my country, where the avg. monthly income is about 2500 € at the moment. Here it is as "afforable" as a A500 was back then, the pure price is practically the same.

Quote:

An Amiga 500 back to 1987 had a very astounding price/performance ratio, and was considered a hi-end home computer

So what? Back then the reason for being high priced was hi-end, now the reason for being high priced is being a niche-product. And?

Anyway, what's "affordable" and what's not is nothing very objective in the first place. Personally I find the X500 both affordable and reasonable priced, considering the niche-factor. And I don't have a gigantic income.

_________________
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Wings Remastered Development Diary

Price of PPC hardware isn't problem, there are plenty of cheap PPC based computers in every electronic store.

Many of digi-tv set-top boxes are actually PPC based computer with Linux installed.

And let's not forget Efice nice little computer, only big minus is no possibility add more ram.

Or LimePC http://www.limepc.com/ produces really cheap PPC hardware just for computer use.

Amiga is hobby os, there is no point to compare it any other computers, it is hobby thats it. BUT we need true economic solution to get more users and that way more programs and apps.

It is fact that many people would be happy to have new amiga, if price is correct and even IF CPU power is not so high.

I would be perfectly happy with 400mhz ->

@Kicko



Quote:

When os4 gets written to a cheap x86 hardware .

No.

If that happen, price will stay, look at double priced actual Apple-Systems. Got they really cheaper than mass-marked? No!

_________________
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@utri007

My question is: how will this user-base ever grow again? There are no fast solutions, that's for sure but how?

Reading this thread I see no answer to that and I don't think that there is an answer. And that is just... weird? There must be a plan.

@Daytona675x

Quote:

? For OS4.x the AmigaOne X500 is one of the most advanced pieces of hardware available at the moment. And being a niche product you have to pay the price. Interesting enough you seem to forget that small fact while saying I'd

... compared to the A500, which was a product 'for the masses'. You simply forget the 'small' fact, that you can't compare these two systems by only two factors, namely the absolut price and your monthly income. That's just a two-dimensional comparison, and not the way the market works...

Quote:

May well be. That's the reason why I explicitely talked about my country, where the avg. monthly income is about 2500 € at the moment. Here it is as "afforable" as a A500 was back then, the pure price is practically the same.

Well, then take it into account, that you'll need a second computer today, because the A1X500 doesn't cope your average computer tasks...

Quote:

So what? Back then the reason for being high priced was hi-end, now the reason for being high priced is being a niche-product. And?

The difference is that being hi-end is quite a valid reason for being high-priced... Being a niche-product is only valid for being high-priced, if you can offer something the competition can't offer...

Last edited by _analogkid_ on 17-Oct-2011 at 01:40 PM.
Last edited by _analogkid_ on 17-Oct-2011 at 01:40 PM.

@hotrod

There are plenty of curious and nostalkig middle aged men, who wounldn't think that 200-300€ would be too much for new amiga.

We gotta remember that 88-92 amiga was economy choise, it was much cheaper than "real" computers. So economy prized amiga would be just one move to back to the roots.

Ofcourse there was plus and cons in that time, but generally amigas didn't had harddrive, separate monitor, etc

@hotrod

Quote:

My question is: how will this user-base ever grow again?

That's a challenge to find new business for Amiga platform.

But everybody who's still active one way or antoher in this community should try to contact every ex-Amigan whos valid contact information you still have somewhere and try to convince them to come back to the platform. That's the best, cheapest and quickest way to try to expand the user base. Try convincing all other hobbyists to try yet another small OS platform and OS tied hardware also.

@_analogkid_
Quote:

Being a niche-product is only valid for being high-priced, if you can offer something the competition can't offer...

AmigaOS. (Is the thing the competition can't offer.)

@wawa
Quote:

but did cheap and affordable hardware like used macs or x86 contributed to any more success of aros or mos?

It's very rare I can agree with you. But this time it's +1. Have cheaper hardware helped AROS or MOS to grow their communities, I guess not. Or maybe they want AmigaOS on cheap hardware and not just any OS (be it API compatible or not) ?

@all
Think also will you pay higher price to Acube who produces their hardware in Europe paying decent salary to the workers and also gives jobs to them. Or you pay lower price to Chinese who doesn't pay decent salary to their workers ? It's a personal choice.

Last edited by Tomppeli on 17-Oct-2011 at 01:58 PM.
Last edited by Tomppeli on 17-Oct-2011 at 01:57 PM.
Last edited by Tomppeli on 17-Oct-2011 at 01:55 PM.

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@_analogkid_
Quote:

compared to the A500, which was a product 'for the masses'.

Actually it was not. It was too expensive when it came out, but that's a different story.

Quote:

You simply forget the 'small' fact, that you can't compare these two systems by only two factors, namely the absolut price and your monthly income

Can't think of anything better than those factors (and you neither, at least you didn't say something valid until now), since it is a niche-product you cannot compare to other electronics. Income vs. absolute price seems pretty reasonable under that circumstances.

Quote:

and not the way the market works...

Obviously it does. Otherwise we'd have so-called "affordable" hardware and no reason to talk about

Quote:

Being a niche-product is only valid for being high-priced, if you can offer something the competition can't offer...

Correct. Thanks for agreeing with me.
There is no competition, because it's a niche. There is no other OS4.x hardware, so no competition that can offer anything at all

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@hotrod

Quote:

My question is: how will this user-base ever grow again? There are no fast solutions, that's for sure but how? Reading this thread I see no answer to that and I don't think that there is an answer. And that is just... weird? There must be a plan.

Usually the small growth was made possible every time there was a new hardware and/or new version of the OS since 3.9 (namely versions of 4.0 and 4.1 for different platforms)

Are these all people that wanted to use OS 4.x, and would new hardware bring new users is quite unknown. Presumably, hardware is available and there is not much need for new one beside high end (X1000) and maybe low low end one (now Classics and older SAMs e.g. 440 @ 400-533Mhz)

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@all

Aren't we rehashing an old thread?

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=17229&forum=33

_________________
I sold my SAM460ex lite... waiting for money to buy a Raspberry Pi... or a Classic A1000 with Buffee... or an A1222... and OS4.3 FE update 11

It's interesting that Olegil (around post #30) predicted both the SAM440 series and the X1000 in that thread (systems based on SOCs like the AMCC440SP and the PASemi6t).

Last edited by PhantomInterrogative on 17-Oct-2011 at 03:25 PM.

_________________
I sold my SAM460ex lite... waiting for money to buy a Raspberry Pi... or a Classic A1000 with Buffee... or an A1222... and OS4.3 FE update 11