[News] Show report: AAA 2003, Commodore Billboard back online | ANN.lu |
Posted on 07-Jul-2003 19:46 GMT by Jens Schönfeld | 217 comments View flat View list |
This is a show report from individual Computers about the Amiga Alpe Adria that took place in Udine, Italy this weekend, and some good news about the Commodore Billboard!
This weekend, the Amiga Alpe Adria 2003 took place in Udine, Italy - another station of Amiga OS4 on tour. The show was organized by Cloanto, well-known for a lot of Amiga programs and the emulator "Amiga Forever". Jürgen Schober of Point Design had to make two OS4 presentations, because the room was totally overcrowded with more than 100 Amiga fans and journalists of daily press and computer magazines. We also had the chance to show our products in a 30-minute presentation. Best-seller of the present retailers Soft 3 and Virtual Works was the Catweasel MK3, that became the first choice accessory for many Amiga One owners because of it's high degree of integration into the hard- and software of the new Amiga.
A small Retro-computing museum right at the entrance of the showroom brought back joyful memories in the visitors. Rare items like an SX-64 in best shape, a VIC-20 rev.1, and even a C65 prototype were shown. One of the first multi-computer games (today's networking games) was shown on two
PET computers that were connected through the serial ports. The home computer pioneer Altair 8800 from 1975 was the only none-Commodore computer.
The "Video Microwave", a Pegasos-board that was built in the case of a Sharp Microwave oven, was - at best - good for a laugh. The keyboard did not work at all, and it only took a few mouseclicks to make the computer with the MorphOS operating system crash. The reason for this could not be found in the short time of the show.
Commodore Billboard back online
Our good news for the fans of Commodore nostalgia almost got lost in the excitement surrounding Amiga OS4: The Commodore Billboard is back online! The initiator of the project, Søren Ladegaard (Denmark) had to drop the project due to lack of time in January 2003, and transferred the website to individual Computers. We're now sponsoring the website that can cause a lot of traffic with it's several hundred megabytes in size. During the past half year, the new webmaster Stefan Zelazny has converted the audio and video files to mpeg and mp3, so the website can be viewed on most platforms. For example, the Realplayer is not necessary any more.
Currently, the website is available under the address www.commodorebillboard.de. The .com domain will be made available in the coming weeks.
If you're interested in a local copy of the website, you can support us in paying for the high cost of the website by ordering the CD. It will be available in august this year from all our retail partners for about 15,- EUR. The double-CD package also contains some surprises for Commodore-fans!
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Show report: AAA 2003, Commodore Billboard back online : Comment 197 of 217 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Vexar on 09-Jul-2003 00:59 GMT | Where the heck was this show? My sister who lives in Udine couldn't find it. She said it was in some mall, and covered it for a half hour. Oh well, apart from the anti-microwave cooker bias, the show report was fairly complete, and the coincidence of my sister on the far side of town was to her advantage. Still, I am left with questions that the average consumer (my sister) was bound to ask:
When will the Amiga One be for sale?
When will OS 4.0 (oh wait, is it OE? I forget) be for sale?
How much will each cost, and is the Amiga One a full system (monitor, keyboard mouse, modem/ethernet) or something far, far less, like you don't even get memory with the purchase (and it's still $600 USD)? I heard a rumor about that.
What software comes bundled with the Amiga One? Web Browser? Email client? Word Processor?
If I'm migrating from the PC or the Mac, will all my files work? I have a lot of MS Word documents and some spreadsheets, as well as some other important files from productivity software.
How many titles (broken down by area) are out for the new Amiga? How many are planned within the next year?
What devices and peripherals are supported? Does HP make a driver for my scanner on the new Amiga? How about my printer, and my digital camera? They are either USB or SCSI, is that okay? Will it synchronize with my PDA?
Where do I take my computer if I need it fixed? Can I get an extended service plan?
There's a lot of great games coming out for the XBox, and some of them are making it to the PC. Does that mean it will work on this system, too?
And that, gentlemen (and the infrequent lady), is why our platform is dead. We've stopped focusing on the obvious issues of critical mass for a personal computer when we look at Eyetech's bare-bones generation-old motherboard, which sells for more than the system I bought 18 months ago, and doesn't peck the surface of its performance capabilities, in everything except RS2-32, USB, VGA, and every other standard that has a ceiling. Oh wait, does it support USB 2.0?
Bill McEwen, if he's not already in cognito, ought to tell that endless army of 3000 Amiga developers to start putting it out, because the number of geeks in today's economy with that kind of scratch to spare on a nuance is slim to grim. Maybe Mr. Woods' pallate of Amiga SDK copies, when sold, will revitalize this unassuming horde of programmers, but from where I'm sitting, a car only goes up so many RPMs in first gear, and the Amiga just isn't some techno-wonder anymore, like a fuel-cell car or a pilotless combat plane.
Vexar (The original: Deny all imposters) |
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