Agreed. But I think the actual mass-production run (if it happens) will be cheaper. It better be. $1000 US for a SOC PPC 667mhz board is unrealistic. And you are right; its the reason I didn't buy an XE or micro. $900 US was just too much for me to justify for a hobby OS.

I won't delete my account, however. I'll just eat crow and pony up for an Efika.

_________________
...wait... what?

@redrumloa

The target price has been said (by one of the authors) to be 450¤+VAT including OS4.
Don't know where those figures of Jens comes from..

If they achieve mass production rate the board can only get cheaper.

_________________
/Harry

[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

@Smawel

That the price the current 10-layer proto would cost. If it was produced in real number and if it was working that is....

The actual "Sam" is going to be a different board yet to be designed.

Think of it as something like the 2-ZIF-socket-Pegasos-proto from early 2001, more a proof of concept and testbed than an actual product.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Samwel

Jens' estimate was based on his noticing that the board has ten layers, and his own experience making and selling electronics (more layers = more expensive). However, he also said that when making prototypes, it's common to have more layers than you strictly need and he expects to see the layer count reduced before the board becomes final; he even describes some of the optimizations he expects will be done to the board to cut costs. It makes sense; when you're still making changes you want to keep your options open, and when you're happy with the design, then you optimize. It's all in his report, but it's easy to glaze over if you're not into technical trivia though. Jens is a techie and it shows

1000 EUR for another AmigaOS 4.0-platform and it will fail.
It will only sell to a few hundred fans, it won't give any new
users. What AmigaOS 4.0 needs is a stripped down, cheap
platform á la EFIKA. I'm not saying you must chose the EFIKA
but the concept. Integrating a Mobility Radeon 9000, 512 MB
RAM and FPGAs are expensive.. The SAM has way too many
things onboard that it will never be cheap.

It's a good replacement for failed AmigaONEs, but not good
at all for giving us new users.

Price of Samantha will be in a range from 399 upto 450 as stated on italian forums by Enrico Vidale from Virtual Works.

This will mean that Efika it is a good entry level platform, aimed at developers, persons with a very little budget, and a very vaste market of automotive end embedded devices.

Samantha will be at an upper level for those who want all onboard and enough connection ports (such as 3Dgraphics oboard and USB 2.0 ports), and will be aimed at persons who have middle budget, research centers, PPC based PVR market, etcetera.

If only the two platforms could had share a common distribution and marketing system, they will had sold many more machines due to the synergy of the entire system.

I hope that Samantha could obtain licences of MorphOS, so we will re-unificate the entire market.

Commercial agreements between Genesi and "the italians". should had signed.

Genesi will continue selling Efika in USA and commercialize also Samantha in USA...

"The italians" will continue selling Samantha in Europe and sell also Efika in Europe...

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

And, still from "this italians"

The 440EP is already running at 667Mhz (not like Jens said).
Sam can handle 6 PCI devices (not only 2).

Last edited by elwood on 02-Dec-2006 at 11:00 AM.

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

Re: $1000 US for SAM

I think that's more down to the state of the US economy and the very weak dollar.
SAM's price is supposed to be around 500Euro and theoretically, the Euro was envisaged to be comparable to the US dollar.

As always, the key to lowering the price will be finding a few good industrial customers who will order larger batches than the Amiga-only audience would need.

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

@yoodoo2

Exchange rates have nothing in the world to do with raising the cost of the board up slowly until you have it reaching exorbitant price levels. People kept saying that about the µA1 too until I showed them hard facts that proved the exchange rates were almost exactly the same when the board was announced (and sold) at $500 USD to the time that dealers were trying to get people to purchase it for $975 USD. It had everything to do with them trying to squeeze large prices out of a market where there was not a choice. The prices didn't jump up until the last A1XE's were out of supply, then suddenly they tried to charge the same premium prices for the micro.

BTW, I don't know where you get that 500 Euro amount from, because it is clearly been stated otherwise:


Quote:

AmiKit: What will be the price of Samantha? Max: The price for end users will be somewhere between 370 and 399 EUR excluding tax.

Source: interview

At today's rate:
370 EUR = 492.581 USD
399 EUR = 531.189 USD

@Herewegoagain

Yep. And from an AW post by the developer of Sam one month ago:
Quote:

The price for such a sistem without OS4 is max Euro 350, at the actual estimated production volume, Euro/USD exchange rate, and DDR ram price.

Which is one reason we created the new forum to eliminate the misinformation here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3470

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

Quote:

BTW, I don't know where you get that 500 Euro amount from, because it is clearly been stated otherwise:

Including 100 Euro for AOS4?

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

@yoodoo2

I don't recall anyone ever saying that OS4 will add $100 EUR to the cost of a system. Do you have a link for that?

This will not be a retail copy of OS4 and should not be priced as such. You are paying alot more for a licensed motherboard which in part is due to the OS4 license fee. The cost of a bundled copy of OS4 should not reach such a high price as a retail packaged product. OS 3.9 sells for about 46 USD (aprox 35 EUR). Do we really expect a bundled OS4 to sell for 3 times that amount when it is based off of the 3.9 sources?

@Herewegoagain

Quote:

I don't recall anyone ever saying that OS4 will add $100 EUR to the cost of a system. Do you have a link for that?

Again, from the developer from one month ago:
Quote:

Target price for the 667 Mhz, 256Mb ram including OS4 is Euro 450 + local taxes.

Compare with my post#30 for with/without OS4.

#6

_________________
This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

Quote:

Do we really expect a bundled OS4 to sell for 3 times that amount when it is based off of the 3.9 sources

Hmm. You really seem to have no idea how much work has gone into OS4 do you?

Quote:

You are paying alot more for a licensed motherboard which in part is due to the OS4 license fee

The license fee goes to AInc, the OS4 fee goes to Hyperion.

Frankly, I'll leave the pricing up to the relevant companies involved and make a decision on whether to buy once a product is ready and available to be shipped. If it's so expensive that I choose not to buy, then I won't buy - not repeatedly whinge on that it's too expensive, that there's nothing else on offer, that's it's too late, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not happy about the price of Porsche's products, but I don't go clogging up fora moaning about it.

_________________
Happiness is mandatory.
MindSpace: MindMaps and UML diagrams for OS4

We ran 5 Recursion Computer Fairs before hitting the exit condition

Quote:

Hmm. You really seem to have no idea how much work has gone into OS4 do you?

Hmm.. You really seem to have no idea how much the average user is willing to pay to "experience" OS4 do you?

It was Rogue himself that said the OS3.9 sources were used to create the OS4 ones (via them using the same developers), so it's not like they built Rome from scratch. They ported an OS and added some functionality to it, even though it's missing many required (for most users) modern features.

But hey, Hyperion can charge whatever they want for OS4 as far as I'm concerned. Do you think that embedded users are going to pay an extra 100 EUR for a device because it's running OS4? An extra 100EUR for a cell phone or PDA because it's running OS4? What about the much talked about/specualted PS3? (or any console for that matter). If OS4 becomes available for them, do you think Joe Public is going to to pay 100 EUR to try OS4 as opposed to a 50EUR Linux boxed retail package? Yeah, good luck with that....

And I tell you what... so that I don't "clog up" any more of your precious forum, I'll just walk away here and now. Hell, Amiga doesn't need me. I'm just one person, right? What do I matter? I should have stayed away the last time.

@HWGA

_________________

@Herewegoagain

Don't be sad. Just accept that there is always good news just around the corner and stop worrying. You will be a much happier man that way.

By the while, Rogue has just innofficially announced on this website that there will be an announcement later this year.

_________________
This signature is in the middle of a much needed facelift!

@Herewegoagain

Read Jens Schoenfeld's report before jumping to conclusions. Jens is very quick to point out that the SAM440ep is still a prototype squarely targeted at the embedded space. He hypothesizes on how the SAM440ep could be redesigned in order to make it more attractive (price wise) to the mass market. Something that may already be in the cards for a production model (if what we've heard elsewhere is to believed).

Lets not start any FUD... Unintentional as it may be.

Last edited by ShadesOfGrey on 03-Dec-2006 at 05:00 PM.
Last edited by ShadesOfGrey on 03-Dec-2006 at 04:40 PM.
Last edited by ShadesOfGrey on 03-Dec-2006 at 04:38 PM.
Last edited by ShadesOfGrey on 03-Dec-2006 at 04:29 PM.
Last edited by ShadesOfGrey on 03-Dec-2006 at 04:27 PM.

_________________
Unless otherwise explicitly stated, this message is not meant to affirm nor deny, defend nor offend any faction within the 'Amiga' Community.

@CodeSmith

This Sunday feels like a Monday. I'm so 'out of it' I hadn't notice you had beaten me to the punch.

@Thread

Come on people, lets stop the FUD hysteria! I urge everyone to please, please, PLEASE read the source article of this topic before responding to someone else's comments on that article.

_________________
Unless otherwise explicitly stated, this message is not meant to affirm nor deny, defend nor offend any faction within the 'Amiga' Community.

@Herewegoagain

And I tell you what... so that I don't "clog up" any more of your precious forum, I'll just walk away here and now. Hell, Amiga doesn't need me. I'm just one person, right? What do I matter? I should have stayed away the last time.

It matters how Amigans feel. We still vote with those green $$bucks.

_________________