Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!bagate!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: Amiga 1000 Abandonment Message-ID: <20962@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 25 Apr 91 22:45:29 GMT References: <1991Apr25.042851.8912@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 78 In article <1991Apr25.042851.8912@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> pwvicory@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Paul William Vicory) writes: > This may be very late and old news, but I would like to express the >concerns of both myself and of many (5-6 Amiga 1000 users) , O.K., several >of my friends. All of us spent over $1300 in 1986 to invest in what we felt >was the wave of the future in computers: the Commodore Amiga 1000. My dis- >pute isn't with whether our choice was right or not, but it is a concern >to us that our Amiga's appear to be worthless in the computer marketplace. You don't get much in the way of money back for any computer that old. You can get an A500 these days, brand new, for about $500. While I would personally rather have an A1000 on my desk than an A500, it's awful hard to make the average person believe that a used five year old computer is worth as much as a brand new one. I had the same problem trying to sell my five year old Fiero last fall. I paid about $9000 for that baby in '86, yet no one seemed willing to pay me more than a couple hundred. GM wouldn't put a new suspension system and turbo charged engine it in, nor would they give me a big break on a new model to replace it (not that they had one I wanted, in any case). As far as the A1000 being worthless as a computer, why is that? Mine seems to work just as well now as it did when I bought it. Better, actually, since it now has four times the memory. >Right now, I can't give my Amiga 1000 away. I would like to upgrade, but I >will never be able to justify or allow it if I can't sell the computer I have. You would have the same problem with a PC-XT or 128/512K Mac. >Will Commodore, if they are really interested in selling the new Amiga's, >offer some kind of discount to those who invested heavily in the Amiga at >the outset. None of us could take advantage of the Commodore buyback offer >of last year: we were all still paying off or recovering from the loans we >took out to get these Amiga's. That is certainly a marketing issue, but at least they did make the offer. I'm no sales or marketing guy, but I think it's understandable that Commodore may not wish to keep such an offer going indefinitely. Far as I know, they were the only ones in the business to make such an offer. Apple has offered motherboard upgrades in the past, but you're usually better off selling the old machine and buying a new one, these things can be real expensive. IBM and most of the others give you no offer, and suggest you scrap the old system and buy a new one. >If the Amiga goes the way of the C=64, Commodore sold some 46% more C64s this last quarter than a year ago. It's hardly going away. >my previous computer expenditure and waste of dollars that could have gone >into a system (like an IBM) that I could have upgraded and still be using >today, I will certainly not recommend or purchase Commodore products in the >future. You could upgrade and run 2.0 on an A1000 a heck of alot easier than you can upgrade an original IBM PC and run OS/2 or Windows 3.0 on it. The only way at present to directly upgrade either system is via plug ins. There was an offer from Commodore, which you declined to accept, to trade up to an A2000. IBM never made such an offer, your only recourse with a system like that would be to go out and purchase some new IBM PC-sized motherboard and integrate an upgrade on your own. And forget upgrading a 128K/512K Mac, your only choice is to replace either the motherboard, assuming Apple will still do this for you, or the entire system. At least with the A1000, you can plug in extra memory, do a ROM conversion, etc. via third party add-ins onto the same basic platform. Technology marches on, and it's impossible to build in hooks for everything you're going to want five years from now. Believe me, that's my specality, what I tried to do for the A2000 and A3000. You don't alway know how things will progress. You can plan for changes and upgrades, but you don't know what's coming. The A3000 is capable of doing things no A2000 will do, and there's nothing we can do to an A2000 to change that. This is progress. Some day there will in all likelihood be an Amiga that's fancier and more powerful than the A3000. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight" -R.E.M.