Amiga Returns With Lackluster Linux-Powered Mini PC 343
crookedvulture writes "Commodore has revealed the Amiga mini, a small-form-factor system that runs a custom Linux distro dubbed Commodore OS Vision. A trailer for the OS hardly inspires confidence, and the rest of the system doesn't help. While the Amiga mini features a high-end Intel desktop CPU and modern conveniences like Blu-ray, USB 3.0, and 802.11n Wi-Fi, it's stuck with one of the slowest graphics chips Nvidia makes. Some of the other specifications are head-scratchers, too. The mini comes with a whopping 16GB of RAM but only a terabyte of storage. You'll have to pay extra to get an SSD, which makes the $2500 asking price particularly onerous. The case, Blu-ray drive, and power supply are being made available separately, but at $345, they're hardly a bargain. Add this to the list of nostalgia-baiting remakes that don't live up to their inspiration."
Update: It looks like Commodore has dropped the price after receiving a lot of negative feedback.
It goes without saying (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not Commodore, this is not the Amiga. This is a fucking bastard.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Funny)
Also, a the end of the trailer it says "Commodore OS Vision coming 11.11.11".
I suppose they were planning to release it but then they took an arrow to the knee.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3, Informative)
Also, a the end of the trailer it says "Commodore OS Vision coming 11.11.11".
I suppose they were planning to release it but then they took an arrow to the knee.
You're able to grab an early beta... which is just a bastardized version of Linux Mint with a godawful ugly shell and cheesy robot voiceover... i thought maybe it would have some goodness centered around C64 emu, but nothing more then you can get from the FOSS community already...
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision.aspx
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Insightful)
All these half assed linux distros, especially those that used to ship with netbooks give linux a bad name...
They need to use a mainstream well known distro with a decent package repository available.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:4, Insightful)
That is fantastic. Are you saying than that everything ships late to maximize the free pizza per project ratio? :-)
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3)
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3)
The fact that Commodore makes it doesn't make it an Amiga.
The fact that the company has bought the name "Commodore" doesn't make it Commodore. This tedious crap has happened over and over, since -94.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3)
there is no such thing as a real amiga with a power pc cpu
you could get a 3rd party accelerator card after commodore died, hell I dont even think PPC was available until a year or 2 after Amiga vanished, or you could get some bastardized 4 grand hacked up IBM motherboard with chip emulation in software in the early 2000's but Amiga never left the Motorola 68k arena from the factory
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Informative)
This pseudo-Commodore company [wikipedia.org] (this is NOT the original Commodore company, which went out of business a long time ago) did the same thing with the Commodore 64 a while back, releasing a supposed clone [wikipedia.org] of the classic machine that was basically just a custom case fitted around a PC running Ubuntu. The world was underwhelmed, to say the least.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Interesting)
Know what else has a Core i7 processor? a Mac Mini.
They only have 4GB of memory by default, but at $999 you can get one with dual 7200rpm 500GB hard drives, Intel HD 3000 graphics, and a copy of Lion Server. There's no bluray, but it's also less than half the price of this Amiga DOA box.
When your product is a less attractive knockoff of an Apple design and somehow you manage to more than double an Apple price... I'm guessing your future does not include being filthy stinking rich.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:2, Insightful)
Holy smokes!
The world has started spinning in reverse because the Apple product is a comparatively better buy.
The sky is falling!!!!11!
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Informative)
I found the iMac 27" a better deal a year and a half ago when I was looking for an all in one. At the time the only thing I found really worth comparing with it was a HP model but it only had a 19" screen, and i3 and less graphics for I think it was ~200 less. So for 200 I got 9" more of a higher res display, an i7 quad, and a better graphics card. Made sense to me at the time. It all depends on what you want sometimes apple is a bit more but gives you a better screen and a little boost somewhere.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3)
the mac was always a better buy, unless you wanted a 2500$ computer that did the same things as a 199$ SEGA Genesis
even back in the day (watch computer chronicles) Amiga struggled with what you actually did with the computer ... multitasking OS awesome, now this game shows off the sound and graphics, and this game blah blah blah. They really never did have a super strong selling point to the computer user, it was just another home computer with limited software, tons of games, some niche uses at the same time mac was dominating the desktop publishing and workstation scene, and x86 was dominating the "its ugly but its doing a great job" scene.
course things would change drastically, atari and amiga vanished, apple tried to fill that home void that they once held with horrible results (reason why our second computer was a pc and not apple, cause they treated us like we were stupid with their per store modeling and somewhat random pricing) , and the x86 platform seemed to fill in all its holes all at once.
hell by the time amiga died you could pick up a pretty cheap PC with more horsepower, better sound and graphics, color inkjet printer and a fat monitor and 15 years of backwards compatibility.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Informative)
Know what else has a Core i7 processor? a Mac Mini.
The chip in the Mac Mini is a mobile chip while the chip in this thing is an unlocked desktop chip. Don't let the fact that they share the i7 brand fool you into thinking they are the same thing.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3)
>> Know what else has a Core i7 processor? a Mac Mini.
> No it doesn't.
Yes it does. From Apple [apple.com], right hand column: "2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 ... Configurable to 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7, only at the Apple Online Store." Of course ten seconds of checking would have told you that.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3)
This thing has a desktop i7. Quad core and higher clock. It handily outclasses the Mini, but still way overpriced.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish they'd just let the poor Amiga rest in peace. Far, far, far ahead of it's time and an early death due to morons in the HQ. Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould....the anti-Jobs. Together they wrote the manual on how to mismanage a billion dollar corporation into bankruptcy in just a few short years. Towards the end the small investors grouped together to hire a Private Investigator to find out where the clandestine stock-holder meeting was being held so they could show up to give them hell. If anyone had ever compared a pitiful late 80's early 90's pc to an Amiga they'd never have believed how things turned out.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Interesting)
I had three Amigas. I really enjoyed using those machines. I loved the fact that it was a true plug N play platform while my PC-using friends were still fucking around with interrupts, DMA channels, shared memory slots and jumpers. I loved the fact that they had not only video acceleration but also audio acceleration. I loved the fact that colour video and stereo audio were in all models. I still think HAM was a pretty cool compression algorithm, especially in that it was implemented in the hardware and could be decompressed as the monitor scanned, reducing the amount of video RAM (or, chip RAM as it was called in the Amiga paradigm) needed for a full-colour picture (remember, RAM was expensive in those days)
Ultimately, though, it is necessary to face a few facts. Commodore was run by a bunch of asshats. They effectively killed off this beloved platform. The platform is dead. Slapping the name on a LInux computer will never bring back what the Amiga was, and it will certainly not make the so-named computer what the Amiga could have and should have been. As much as I love Linux, I am not interested. It is like one of those modern radios that has a plastic enclosure designed to look like a classic cathedral radio. It isn't, it can't be, and it won't be what was lost to time. Enjoy the nostalgia, but eschew the exploitation.
Amiga is dead like Elvis. Mourn and move on.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:2)
ya, but what would you expect these days?
To be fair, not sure what use it would be if it was *really* AmigaOS, there would be nothing current to run on it, and be damned expensive not ruining on a commodity architecture.
Unfortunately for people who loved the Ataris and Amigas, the time for 'special' has long since passed. ( and we lost.. )
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
OS/2 (Score:3)
You were an OS/2 fan? I never owned it (was a student @ that time w/o a PC of my own) but I read about it and was rooting for it to succeed. Since I learned my Computer Engineering on a PPC 601, I was rooting for OS/2-PPC to come out. It never did - IBM was building Workplace OS on top of the Mach 3 microkernel, and unfortunately, the Mach 3 was a dog - every OS built on it has been a disaster. Finally, IBM pulled the plug on it, and there was no special non-Mac OS for PPC alone other than BeOS for a brief while. That's part of what made Motorola/Freescale lose interest in the CPU.
Actually, there is a project called OSFree - which is just like Workplace OS was supposed to be, except that instead of Mach, they're using the L4 microkernel, which is one of the most advanced microkernels out there and supported on several CPUs. Like ReactOS, I'm rooting for that one to succeed as well. But I agree w/ most of your points above. As somebody who admired CPUs - particularly RISC CPUs (except ARM), I was disappointed by the demise of CPUs like the Alpha, the PA-RISC and the decline of SPARC and MIPS. You are right that none of them are likely to see widespread support on them. And Itanic was a travesty in the CPU market - never really brought any value, but just contributed in sinking PA-RISC and Alpha through hype alone, but never really succeeding them.
As for Amiga, it's dead - like NT/RISC, Irix, VAX, and so many other platforms. I actually think that the commoditization of the entire computer industry on Intel and ARM has been tragic, since a lot of these platforms didn't deserve to die.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3)
I remember a story about one of the first vendor shows the Amiga crew went to. They had a ton of custom chips handwired together, sitting under the table, and they said they just prayed that no one would accidentally kick the boxes. Truly the wild west days of the personal desktop computer scene. I'm glad I was (just) old enough to understand what was going on then. But you're correct, we probably won't see something like that again, until we do.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Insightful)
The Amiga was defined by it's custom chipset. The way it handled graphics and sound in conjuction with the CPU coupled with a really sweet multi-tasking system that directly banged the hardware. This ultimately lost out to the much cheaper to build open architechture of the PC when Microsoft finally put out windows 95 that sorta did most of the things the Amiga had been doing for 10 years. It didn't do them nearly as well but it was, as MS usually is, good enough to get by. Coupled with dirt cheap hardware there was no way for the people who bought the Amiga rights to compete with it so there was never a chance for a new Amiga and there never will be. Due to the fanatical user community however some people have played on the desire for a new Amiga to bilk money from the faithful.
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It goes without saying (Score:3, Funny)
You're one to talk dave420. ;-)
Re:It goes without saying (Score:5, Funny)
so... what does that make me? ;)
Re:It goes without saying (Score:2)
You're a bit out of touch with reality. But judging by your username, it's probably a bit of a stretch to expect you to be objective in this discussion.
So what is the real story?
What a new Amiga should be like. (Score:3)
Indeed.
The Amiga was quantum leap in graphics and sound, for home computers, in the 80s, thanks to its custom chips.
If a new Amiga was to be in todays world, it would have to be an equal quantum leap as it was in the 80s.
And, in order to be that, it would need:
-real time raytaced graphics at 60 frames per second.
-natural voice synthersizer.
-natural voice command.
-thousands of CPU cores.
-a special multicore version of the C language.
-a truly advanced O/S that ditched the concept of filesystem and went with a database.
Now that would be a quantum leap! if they could price it at around $5000-$10000, as the original Amiga costed (roughly adjusted for inflation), it would be a new era for computers, just like when the original came to existence!
2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who said Macs were expensive again ?
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone, just because you find a worse offender doesn't mean the lesser one if redeemed.
This is stupid though, $2500 for generic mini-itx hardware with a retarded OS? Is this a joke or something?
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually nobody that has a clue calls mac's expensive.
The irony.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:2)
And only people who can't use apostrophes call them cheap.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:2)
I see the reality distortion field is still capable of reaching from beyond the grave...
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:2)
Yea, now that mac's have abandoned PowerPC, the hardware is not really different than a mid level standard pc.
Depending on what you are looking at, Mac hardware can easily have a 10% to 40% markup for hardware on the base model. And it gets worse for upgrades.
Mac OS and pretty packaging "may" be worthwhile at that markup for some people, but it is mostly subjective.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:2)
Find me a PC as small as a Mac Mini with comparable specs for $599. Not "also small", not "almost as small, but still double the size", but "as small or smaller". You can't. I've asked people here before; I got a bunch of links to small PCs that were still three or four times larger than a Mac Mini.
People have this strange idea that macs are overpriced, but then when they try to get something comparable (not just in specs, but form factor), they quickly find that they're either paying more, or it doesn't exist at all.
That said, I'm still a PC user who hasn't owned a mac in almost twenty years.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:2)
You are not disagreeing with me.
Like I said, a pretty package may subjectively be worth the extra cost.
The smallness of the mac mini is part of its pretty package that you pay a premium for.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:2)
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:3)
>> Find me a PC as small as a Mac Mini with comparable specs for $599.
> Any Sandy Bridge Mini ITX system.
Bull. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. You can't jam an off the shelf Mini ITX board with core i3/5/7 CPU and CPU cooler attached, plus power supply, plus hard drive, plus optical drive, into the current Mac Mini outline. Not even close. You couldn't even do it using an external brick power supply. The current Mac Mini form is much too thin, and the previous one was too small in all three dimensions. I actually tried to see how close I could come, and the smallest Mini ITX system I could make which could actually cool itself adequately enough not to burn up, without sounding like a jet engine, turned out to be comparatively gigantic.
A single company that I know of, Aopen [aopen.com], has made very nice minis the size of the ORIGINAL Mac Mini (which I think was a much more impressive form factor than the current one). But they couldn't do it using Mini ITX or anything else off the shelf. They had to engineer their own custom shrunken-laptop-like board inside and cooler, just like the real Mac Mini. I've had both, and they are both triumphs of practical engineering that no mini ITX piece of garbage can come close to. And the cost reflects it.
If you look at Aopen's Mini ITX offerings [aopen.com], you'll find that they have TWICE the enclosed volume, and crappy Atom CPUs. There is a REASON for that. These guys know how to make beautiful minis, but not using that kind of antiquated tech.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:2)
It's true, I used to have the parent post's gripes, but after using a macbook for a while now you notice these kinds of things. The laptop does not run hot, there's for the most part nothing but silence from the hardware (no noisy fans coming on all the time), the batterly life is good, the keyboard is very nice, and the display is also very nice. Performance, for the hardware it has, is remarkably good.
There's a lot to quality that doesn't come across on the first three lines of a spec sheet.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality. However the Mac may not be a value to you because a lot of the stuff that comes with the Mac you may not need and for the feature that you do want you may have to get extra stuff that you will pay for that you may not use...
So if you want a Laptop that is Light, and Fast. For PC's you have a bunch of options many without too many extras. For Apple you have only a couple of models if that to choose from.
It isn't that Apple is gouging customers (the Apple Tax) you are getting what you pay for. The crux of the matter is you may be getting more then you need or want.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality.
For the very low-end models, maybe, but when you look at the price of the higher models and upgrades -- literally comparing Apples to Apples -- it's readily apparent that their prices are way off, and egregiously so.
Let's compare two "base" iMacs, the only noted difference being the processor and HD:
21.5" Core i5 2.5GHz & 500GB [apple.com] -> 21.5" Core i5 2.7GHz & 1TB [apple.com] [$300 difference]
Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz $184 & Seagate Barracuda 500GB $84 (Total: $268) -> Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 & Segate 1 Barracuda TB $109 (Total: $314)
Actual Difference: $46 Apple's Markup: 552%
Sources: Intel's price list [intc.com] 500GB @ NewEgg [newegg.com] 1TB @ NewEgg [newegg.com]
Component upgrades for the second iMac [apple.com]:
2.7GHz Core i5 -> 2.8GHz Core i7 [Add $200.00]
Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 -> Core i7-2600S $294 Actual Difference: $89 Apple's Markup: 125%
Source: Same as above
4GB -> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $200.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x2 = $50. Actual Difference: $25 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: The most expensive laptop 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM @ NewEgg [newegg.com]
4GB -> 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $600.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x4 = $100. Actual Difference: $75 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: Same as above.
1TB -> 2TB 7200RPM Serial ATA Drive [Add $150.00]
Seagate Barracuda 1TB $109 -> Seagate 2TB $130 Actual Difference: $11 Apple's Markup: 1263%
Source: 1TB @ NewEgg [newegg.com] 2TB @ NewEgg [newegg.com]
And then there's the whole issue of using mobile components in a desktop. Why would they do that? Not to provide value -- mobile components are generally more expensive and lower performing then their desktop components -- but to cram them into a retarded form factor. Sorry, Apple's tax is alive and well, and it's insulting to an informed consumer. You can throw together a *better* system for well less than what Apple charges for its iMac and as a bonus, you don't have to buy a new your monitor when you upgrade your entire system. And for $28 and a little pre-planning, you can even throw Lion on it or run it in a VM. Yes, you have to learn or know how to do it, but as they say, ignorance can be expensive.
Re:2500$ for that thing ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
This abomination is ridiculously expensive compared to a Mac if for no reason more than any sucker who buys it and needs some form of support in 18 months time will probably be shit out of luck, given how often the Commodore and Amiga names have changed hands. That _won't_ happen for a Mac. Peace of mind doesn't come cheap.
Mac pricing isn't about hardware costs, it's about the quality that goes into everything they create - the R&D, the development, the ongoing service, the bundled software, the bundled infrastructure (iCloud etc).
So when you compare that to a Dell Shitspiron XXXX that comes bundled with a bottom-of-the-barrel version of Windows 7, several tonnes of bloatware and a tech support service that has the value add of simulated brain damage Macs _are_not_ that expensive. Unsurprisingly, you get what you pay for.
And, FYI, I built my system last month for the sum of £2,500. THAT is expensive.
Oh wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
_Only_ a terabyte of storage?
Since when is that a little amount of storage?
Re:Oh wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
at that price point it isn't much. my $400 acer desktop came with a terabyte drive in it.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:5, Informative)
_Only_ a terabyte of storage?
Since when is that a little amount of storage?
In a $2500 computer? You can get a 2TB drive for about $15 more than the cost of a 1TB drive. The upgrade to 3TB still adds about $50 to the price, and 4TB even more, but in a system that's got a base price of $2500, it seems like a really bad decision made by beancounters to scrimp on something like the hard drive, especially when the *retail* difference in price to double the storage is less than 1% of the list price of the device.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2, Flamebait)
You can get a 2TB drive for about $15 more than the cost of a 1TB drive.
That upgrade costs about 12 thousand pounds on the apple store.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2)
Now, be fair. It's available for the low, low price of one thousand pounds or thereabouts, last time I checked. Bargain.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2)
Or about $150 on the US Apple store (just checked). As usual, exchange rates in Apple land are a bit... different than elsewhere.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2)
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2)
_Only_ a terabyte of storage?
Since when is that a little amount of storage?
When you ask $2500 for the computer. For that price you should get a computer with 1TB of SSD.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2)
Now if it was 20 years ago, I might agree with you.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2)
Granted it is a solid state drive. But in depending on your use we now have a culture where we don't always need the super sized drives anymore.
160gb is great for normal use. If you are not going be doing movies. If you are going with storing movies. Or excess of music then you will need more storage. But if you are going to browse the web, write software, and run normal applications then 160gb is good enough.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:3)
16 gigs of ddr3 cost me about $115 last year from newegg. Not that expensive.
Re:Oh wow. (Score:2)
Pricepoint fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Guys, welcome to 2012. Now, about the price on your unit .. way, way too high.
Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.
I don't even care what it does -- it's too much money. So, good luck with that.
Re:Pricepoint fail (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pricepoint fail (Score:5, Interesting)
Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.
Case in point, I put together a Core i5 2500k (overclocked to 4.7GHz), 16GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 6870, 16GB of RAM, 1TB drive w/ 60GB SSD for cache (using the Z68 motherboard) for under $1000, less than a month ago. I did salvage the optical drive, monitor, keyboard, and mouse from an old system, but everything else was new. Even if you pick up a *really* nice 24" monitor, it's still under $1500.
For $2500, you can buy a *really* nice iMac, and get better technical support. (as much as I loathe Apple's business practices, their customer service is *really* good, and I'd recommend them to anybody that actually needs customer service/tech support).
Re:Pricepoint fail (Score:3)
It is like saying that a new Honda Fit is expensive because it cost more then getting a used 1990 Honda Civic.
We don't really have Cadillac PC's anymore, mostly because PC's arn't cool anymore. A laptop (where a high end system could still set you back 3k) is more common.
Back in time Gateway 2000 use to make the Cadillac of PC's Until the late 1990's where they reached the peak of people who wanted the high quality PC's sure getting a Gateway cost more but you got a PC with solid components and wouldn't fail then they started to cut corners so they can compete with Hewlet Packard and Compaq... Quality began to suck...
Dell came in Sure they costed a bit more but they were better made systems. Then they did the same thing around the early/mid 2000's. By this time of the Dells decline Desktop/Tower PCs where getting out of fashion, and moved towards laptops. Where Dell still had some advantages in that market. However Apple and Think Pads (By IBM then by Lenovo) really started to take the High End/Quality Laptop markets Apple for consumers and the Think Pads for Business.
This Amiga price is due to the fact that they are selling the OS and the computer and they are not popular enough to mass produce them.
The standard PC you buy Windows OEM for like $100 per PC. Apple sells enough of their Macs to support the cost of hardware in bulk and their OS. For the Amiga they cannot buy the hardware in bulk and they need to still recoup the cost of the OS development. There may be free software however making software isn't free.
Re:Pricepoint fail (Score:2)
The only market demographic I can see for this device is the "affluent, insane Amiga fan" group. Not much of a market I would think.
Re:Pricepoint fail (Score:3)
They didn't develop an OS though. It's a Linux Distro. I'll grant you it's not free to put together a Linux distro either, but it's a Hell of a lot cheaper than writing an OS from scratch. Even buying the components at retail cost, they're essentially charging around $1500 for a roll-your-own Linux and some ugly case graphics.
NOT AMIGA OS (Score:5, Informative)
Note these aren't the same guys working on the Amiga OS
The Amiga mini they use their own re branded Linux Commodore OS. Amiga OS is a totally different animal.
Re:NOT AMIGA OS (Score:2)
Yep. Its basically no better than those eBay sellers that try to sell open source apps like Blender, Gimp and Audacity like its commercial software.
Where cant I get.... (Score:3)
The KDE skin they are using?
That is the coolest KDE setup I have ever seen. Most of them look like crap, and that one looks great!
Re:Where cant I get.... (Score:2)
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision_Download.aspx [commodoreusa.net]
Re:Where cant I get.... (Score:3)
Hmm. <raises_eyebrow>
Re:Where cant I get.... (Score:2)
Re:Where cant I get.... (Score:2)
You can't get that KDE skin almost anywhere.
Re:Where cant I get.... (Score:2)
Amiga? (Score:5, Informative)
Forget the names please (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forget the names please (Score:2)
The PC they put inside an imitated C64 shell at least had some decorative value.
Oldtimer cars are expensive too (Score:2)
Even if they are completely refitted and tuned, an oldtimer will always be an expensive and slow car. Still, people buy it.
And they sometimes have a blu-ray installed in it.
Re:Oldtimer cars are expensive too (Score:2)
Basic stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
The anti-slashvertisement! (Score:5, Funny)
Notice how that summary is about a product yet it is almost exclusively filled with negatives? Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the.... anti-slashvertisement.
I wonder what happens if the next story is a slashvertisment and the two touch?
Re:The anti-slashvertisement! (Score:2)
Wanted... Stupid people (Score:2)
GPU (Score:4, Interesting)
Serious question: what do people need a beefy GPU for on a machine with an alternative OS? You already can't run the latest PC/windows games, and you don't need a spec-tastic GPU for running 99% of other applications. Am I missing something, or is this just hardware lust?
Re:GPU (Score:3)
Re:GPU (Score:2)
Commodore history of a name (Score:5, Informative)
Ownership of the Amiga line passed through a few companies, from Escom of Germany in 1995, and then to U.S. PC clone maker Gateway in 1997, before an exclusive lifetime license was made to Amiga, Inc. in 2000. On March 15, 2004, Amiga, Inc. announced that on April 23, 2003 it had transferred its rights over Amiga OS to Itec, LLC, later acquired by KMOS, Inc. On March 16, 2005, KMOS, Inc. announced it's change of corporate name to Amiga, Inc.
Commodore USA, LLC was founded in April 2010. Commodore USA licensed the Commodore brand from Commodore Licensing BV on August 25, 2010 and the Amiga brand from Amiga, Inc. on August 31, 2010.
TL;DR This is not the Commodore International you knew and loved.
Re:Commodore history of a name (Score:3)
...the Commodore brand name was acquired by Dutch computer maker Tulip Computers NV...
Well that explains the price: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania [wikipedia.org]
Wrong OS (Score:2)
A custom Linux distro? What's the point of calling it Amiga then? They should have made a PowerPC machine, running the actual AmigaOS, then they could call it an Amiga. Hell, if you install AROS on any regular PC, it will be far more truly Amiga than this junk.
Re:Wrong OS (Score:3)
Wait, someone is making an actual next-gen Amiga, and it's not those dolts. See here. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wrong OS (Score:2)
Then they should have made something that at least looks like an Amiga, not a Mac mini.
again? (Score:2)
Sounds like the same ol' Commodore... (Score:5, Interesting)
I first sold Commodore in Minneapolis back when they were making calculators in 1968. They came out with a 30-lb., programmable calculator that used magnetic strips to hold the programs. It only held 30 instructions, but it had recursion so it outperformed Friden and Marchant's competitive products. (One was 60 lbs and had two units connected by a thick cable, the other needed to be reprogrammed by performing the operation so it could be memorized before starting to produce any useful work.) I sold a bunch to Bell. With no printer (nixie-tube readout) an office of 30 people was practically silent. Bell had open rooms filled with clacking and clanking calulators in those days. Now we complain that the person next to us has a loud keyboard... Well, I made some money, but you should have heard the owner complain about the money he had tied up in Commodore. I didn't really know what he meant at the time.
Jump to 1978: I'm the first one selling Apple II and Commodore PET computers in Anchorage. I had to order 5 PET units at a time. My cost was $999.00 and the selling price was $1499.00. As long as I had a $5000 deposit with Commodore I had a $5000 "line of credit". But the manufacturing was lousy. I typically had shipments come in with two or more units DOA (and one where 4 out of my 5 units were DOA), which I had to RMA and wait for them to be returned. I needed stock? No problem: Commodore would gladly take another $5000 deposit and let me order 5 more units...
Jump to 1988: I'm selling computers to NASA in Houston for a store that also carries the Commodore Amiga. And guess what?..My manager is complaining about the same lousy manufacturing and policies that I did 10 years ago.
Jump to 1993: I helped set up a computer department for BizMart (now OfficeMax) and they are trying to deal with the same lousy stocking problems from Commodore. Right around Christmas time we sold a lot of Commodore Amiga and associated products. After Christmas the returns started coming in: It seems that we had all the marginal units dumped on us to make the Commodore numbers look good for some type of joint venture or purchase deal.
I believe in my heart that Commodore would have gone out of business if they didn't have the CMOS manufacturing to keep them afloat. I pity the vendors stuck dealing with Commodore, but it will probably be someone clueless like Best Buy anyway. The commodore products were somewhat innovative, but the company was not consumer or vendor friendly.
Re:Sounds like the same ol' Commodore... (Score:3)
I too worked at a Commodore shop. Our "RMA" policy was to buy a good C64 from Toys-r-Us and swap the bad part (very often the power supply) we got from Commodore and return it to Toys-r-Us.
I remember on the SX64 the power supply would die if you just looked at the 9VAC pins on the user port wrong. The case mounted fuse wouldn't blow, the little diode sized one wrapped up in the supply transformer would. I made some nice spare change replacing that fuse with a bit of wire.
Still, the first portable color computer, that was a sweet box.
WTF (Score:2)
So what makes this machine an Amiga?
FWIW I owned amiga computehttp://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/03/22/1241200/amiga-returns-with-lackluster-linux-powered-mini-pc#r(s) from July 86 until July 02 (At which point I moved to the US, so sold them or gave them away.
Commodore and Amiga died decades ago (Score:2)
What's the point of the Amiga name, now? (Score:2)
It seems like they resurrected the Amiga brand name just to see who they could see who they could sell it to with a fancier badge. Very reminiscent of the Lexus ES / Toyota Avalon / Toyota Camry situation where people think they're getting a better car just because it has a luxury badge even though its all the same parts.
Linux with an Amiga emulator (Score:2)
Could the real Amigas please stand up (Score:2, Informative)
Please, please, please check out the "real" Amiga descendants that carry on the spirit of Amiga:
Amiga OS4 from Hyperion, MorphOS from, er, the MorphOS team and AROS from the, er AROS, team.
The first runs on custom built/designed PPC based machines - expensive, but unusual
The second runs on PPC-based MACs - cheap, but oldish
The latter is an open-source AmigaOS re-implementation and runs on x86, PPC and ARM.
ALL of them have far more to do with Amiga than this Linux on an expensive box nonsense.
Mini, without the computer. (Score:2)
$345 for just the box, BluRay drive, and power supply? For another $250, Apple will give me pretty much the same thing, but with a computer and a bunch of software inside. (OK, only DVD instead of BluRay, but who still uses optical media these days?)
Uninspired junk. (Score:2)
It's a bit pathetic that the case for this "Amiga" is essentially a bad Apple Mini knockoff with some Commodore and Amiga logo photoshopped on.
Couldn't they have invested effort in getting a custom case designed that evokes the original? The Amiga 1000 had a cool looking case which could look awesome as a modernized, compact unit. I wish the Apple aesthetic would just die. Not that it's a bad design, but most companies, outside of Japan anyway, seem too uncreative to come up with their own designs.
And they have the gall to charge $2500 for this generic crap?
The legendary luck of Amiga (Score:2)
Even in death, the poor franchise can't catch a break. It keeps getting reanimated zombie-style by people whose goal seems to be:
Seriously. The one huge technological advantage the Amiga had over its market competitors "back in the day" was high-performance graphics hardware. Labeling a generic Mini-ITX with a low-performance Nvidia chipset an "Amiga" is like pasting a Lamborghini badge on your bottom-of-the line Civic. The irony would be risible, if I didn't have this illogical sentimental attachment to what "Amiga" is supposed to mean. As it is, it's just sickening.
And angering, too. It's an insult to the intelligence of the Amiga fanbase by cynically plucking at that those heartstrings to fob off mediocrity with the right trademark at some kind of "sentiment premium" price.
It's almost enough to make you believe in anti-Amiga conspiracy theories.
I'm not gonna comment much on TFA's criticisms of the OS's visual design. The video does present some screenshots that make the GUI look like it was frozen into a glacier in 1992 and just got thawed out, but it's hard to argue about how AmigaOS and Workbench would have evolved if it the product hadn't died, and the desktop look & feel are probably designed to specifically hearken back to that earlier aesthetic.
Re:Resurrected Amiga (Score:5, Funny)
So... Amiga. Is it good or is it whack?
I can't see a port for my video toaster, or a place to insert the lightwave floppies, so it's definitely not as good as the A500 imho. It's almost as though they took the A600, and then removed the last remaining keys. It was hard enough using Deluxe Paint on a computer without the keypad, but it will be completely impossible with no keys at all. I can't see it catching on. I think the smart money will be on Atari this time around.
Re:"Lackluster Linux" (Score:2)
I would quite like a Lacklustre KDE, if that's one where they don't remove features with every "upgrade." (Panning, and now CPU scaling)
Re:ignore this "Amiga", the real platform is elsew (Score:3, Interesting)
To get an idea of what the Amiga community thinks of this, look here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6305&start=0 [amigaworld.net]