Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!bruce!trlluna!shiva!soh From: soh@shiva.trl.oz (kam hung soh) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amiga Competitiveness. Message-ID: <2317@trlluna.trl.oz> Date: 4 Oct 90 23:51:19 GMT References: <1254@crackers.clearpoint.com> <1255@crackers.clearpoint.com> Sender: news@trlluna.trl.oz Distribution: comp.sys.amiga Organization: Telecom Research Labs,Melbourne, Australia Lines: 57 I'm afraid I can't present any new options, but let me give an Australian perspective to the matter .... Local dealers in Melbourne (and K-Mart for A500) are selling a 1Mb A500 for Aus$975.00 (Aus$799.00 + Aus$175.00). The A2000 can be found for Aus$1800.00. The price difference is still much too high for a serious home user, even after adding a reasonable 2Mb & a measly 20Mb hard disk to the A500 (the A590 + 2Mb is about Aus$1000.00, compared to Aus$800.00 for a GVP hard disk card and memory board). A power user would probably want the expansion slots without the grief of buying a new desk, but with the A3000 looming on the horizon and the promise of more grunt CPU power with less hassle, the A2000 seems like a poor second choice for Amiga users who want to upgrade. To make it worse, 286-PC machines with VGA cards and passable monitors, faster advertised clock speeds and bigger hard disks are sold for roughly the same price (Aus$2400.00, I think) as a base A2000. Without getting into a long discussion about the relative technical merits of different machines and operating systems, I believe that the average consumer is going to be more easily lured into getting an AT clone an Amiga. Of course, once they get a clone, they would be very reluctant to change. (One of my friends sold his A500 for a 286 clone since there were more programs, but later complained that it was a bad choice. The 640K barrier on MS-DOS and the non-standard LMS / EMS was making it impossible for him to run large programs from different publishers. Windows? OS/2? Need more memory and a license, which mean more money shelled out for a supposedly better computer.) What can be done with the A2000? Current discussion on the net has focused on these options: 1. Introduce a faster machine to keep up with the clones. Near impossible with the current chip set. 2. Keep a large price difference between the A2000 and the A3000. Until Commodore Australia officially releases the A3000 to the public, there is no way of telling what the price will be. Current knowledgable speculation puts the price of the A3000 + 40Mb hard disk + monitor at about Aus$6200.00. Upgrading an A2000 to an equivalent base A3000 would bring the total cost to that amount. 3. Reduce the prices of both the A500 and A2000 models. A very probable option, given that the prices of both models have remained static for about two years (even after the appreciation of the Australian dollar.) I don't wish to sound like Cassandra (alias the ol' Marc Barrett), but I fear that unless some action is done soon, local dealers would find it a much better option to drop the A2000 and focus on the A500 (for cash flow) and A3000UX (for service income). We live in interesting times .... ----- Soh, Kam Hung email: h.soh@trl.oz.au tel: +61 03 541 6403 Telecom Research Laboratories, P.O. Box 249, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia