Well AMiwest has come and gone. It was a lot of fun, but I got to see just how small the AMiga scene is. It was sad for me to see so few people at the show this year. I think at most we had 75 people over the two day visit.

AmigaOS 4 is moving along, and its still going to cost a lot to get boards I hear from the venders. Could be good for us in the end if that remains true. I asked Mr. Hardware what his expected selling price for an A1 Micro will be come September when they are to go on sale and he said $1000. Thats crazy and I wont pay it.

As for the Pegasos and MOS. We got a lot of Amiga users excited about it. Everyone that came over to use Steve and my system walked away shocked at just how much better it was then the real thing. That was the exact purpose of my making the trip. I wanted to get the system seen and to get Amiga users on it. I had no fewer then 10 people ask me how they could get a board. If I had them for sale I could have sold them then and there with no problem at all. The only think I could do was direct them to the Pegasosppc.com site and the other vendors linked on it. Its quite clear that we are not saturated as its been mentioned. We coould have sold everything we brought if we had product to sell.

I would like to see Genesi make it to more shows in the near future or at least do what Steve and I did. Send someone if even only a user that wants to demo the system. We NEED board at these shows. I would recomend one to raffle off and maybe 5 to 10 for sale. We can sell them and the interest is very much alive and well after people use them. One trick I did to people is ask what aminet software they loved to use. I let them download it on my machine (Oh and we were the only ones that got internet working on the Pegasos systems, no OS4 guys had it up) and then let them use lha or voodoo-x to extract and run the app. They were ALL shocked at how well things can run. It was well worth the trip.

Quote:

I fully agree...

Leo.

>A1 Micro will be come September when they are to go on sale and he said $1000.

OMGWTF?
*Rolling on the floor laughing biting the cat*

Quote:

YES!

Quote:

That's a bit steep. I wouldn't pay that much.

People were talking about using it as a custom DVD player and the like... but DVD players only cost $50 here!

Quote:

Yep, me too.
Hopefully Genesi can finish what they are doing now (had to do with some big order or so) and start delivering boards for the consumers

Bye,

Spidey

Quote:

Spidey, as you know the production started. The online shop is back online and boards will be delivered very shortly. The stock is limited so don't miss the opportunity ;)

Anyway, many thanks for your efforts

Quote:by way of comparison, in 1989 when I bought my Amiga2000 box (nothing in it. just had 2 floppy drives), it cost me $2000 (american dollars).

it was well worth the money.

and the laptop i bought a year and a half ago was certainly more money than this A1. (and while it's useful, nothing can be quite as fun as an amiga. altho, it does have WinUAE).

i don't have the money to get an A1, but if i did, i'd consider getting it.

Quote:actually, USERS should go to shows - just like you did - and make their systems available for playing. we don't need anyone but ourselves. I always enjoy going to amiga meetings and getting my hands on someones's system and really discovering something about it!

I'm glad you enjoyed AmiWest - I heard you had Jupp's puzzle program -

I listened to the audio feed and heard the speeches and interviews. it wasn't quite like being there but it was nice.

Hi tapero,

That's good news



Bye,

Spidey

Quote:
We can't bring and sell machines ourselves... Here we need Genesi and/or BPlan to do something...

Leo.

Quote:
Leo, Cecilia is right. It is not question of selling machine ourself, but to show how great is the pegasos to other user. Today, less than 10 % of computers running at "amiga show" are pegasos.
Let people discovered it ;) Let show how proud we are to have a real ppc computer ! And if they are interested, well they can buy online or trough the reseller channel !

I'm actually kinda disappointed in the Amiwest shows. The venue is in
the middle of nowhere (better make sure you rent a car so the family
can go drive somewhere to do something..) its hotter than hell in Sac
this time of year, and the website for the show wasn't exciting in
1998, and it didn't get better with time. No press, no local computer
user groups of any other flavor.. and wow. 50 people. This show
isn't very well promoted and frankly, I can't blame Genesi for now
throwing good money after bad to come out and preach to a choir of
maybe 30 ppl there who were receptive to MOS and not just BAFs there
to see the latest in Amiga's three ring circus.

Plus you had Rwoods skulking around-how many people's lives does he
have to ruin before they stop letting him into shows??

I"m glad there was some MOS/Pegasos representation there, but for
small shows like this I think its OK for Genesi to not show up.

I was interviewed once at an Amigan-St Louis show about why I used the
Amiga and so on, and was actually in the paper there the next day
Sadly, I have yet to see a newspaperman or woman at an Amiwest show.

I'm sure it was fun to be there but I can't say I'm sorry I didn't
spend the money to go. I think the SACC guys need to work harder on
the promotional aspect of the show, and they need to find a venue that
is within walking distance of all the cool touristy stuff to do in
Sacramento.

Just my two cents.

Oh, and btw: a GRAND for a MicroATX Articia board??!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAahahahahAHAHAHAHAhahahaa!!!!!! Keep on milkin' em
Eyetech!!

I agree fully Tronman, I was a bit surprised by the turnout myself and dont think I would go again if I lived out of California. I think they need to find another place to hold it and do a much better job at getting the word out for next year.

In any case, we really appreciate you going and making the effort on behalf of the Pegasos and MorphOS. Thanks to you and Steve!

R&B

I might as well post my thoughts into Acill's thread:

1. Re : advertising and promotion
Amiwest is promoted on all the main Amiga news sites. I think I shoukld suggest to the group that they need to advertise more outside this circle...even couple of Bay area/LA area newspaper adds might do something? I wonder that SACC seems to be the only active Amiga user group on the West Coast.

Another option of course would be to double-bill the show and go for the Linux-PPC geek factor? (I doubt SACC would go for this and it's certainly against what MZ stands for)

This is a big problem, not just for the Amiwest shows, but for gettign the message out to the marketplace in general. There are people who do not know about the Pegasos/MOS (nor the A1/OS4) and they are semi-interested in Amiga still (let alone the people who no longer visit the main news sites.) We need ways, that are better than user word of mouth, to get the message out there.

2. Turnout
Quite honestly this was very depressing, I really thought it would not get any smaller than last year (around 100/120 people.) This year was had two new hardware platforms, two new operating systems and this weeks Amiga CEO speaking there.

There are, quite honestly, no new people appearing at these shows and this year, even a whole host of the regular atendees never showed. Fully agree with Tronman - It would have been a waste of time/money for Genesi to present here, hence a user demo was the right way to go.

If the message about the hardware/software does not get out there, Amiwest will be non-existant next year (my opinion only , this is not a statement of intent from SACC)

Apparently there was only one AmigaOne sold at the show (doodoohead from AW.net) but apart from that there was nothing but old Amiga stuff on sale yet again.....! This is a chicken and egg situation - without the attendance, it isn't worth a re-sellers trip to the show. Without the vendors, there's no attendance. Of course we are 'special' with the limited availability of both Pegasos and A1 to doubly compound the issue. (Anyone know why A1 is in short supply - can MAI not afford another production run of Articia S? or is it Eyetech?)

3. Location
This years location wasn't great but I have to say totally appropriate given the size of the show. At a better location the stand price would have been 2x and even less vendors there. (?)

Sacramento - well, see my comment on user group activity

4. The actual two days
Apart from the turnout, it seemed like people enjoyed the show. One thing that struck me on the day (whilst demoing) was how seamless an experience MorphOS presents. I was happily firing up applications that people recognized, whether they be 68k Classic, PUP, WUP or MOS native and running this stuff side by side - in some cases I even forgot I'd pushed stuff into the background. We inadvertently ended up with Hyperion Quake2 (GL render) running with MOS Quake port, plus firing up a couple of 68k apps. Then we ended up with the classic WarpUP Voxelspace demo running in teh background all the time whilst I was firing up Pagestream, Papyrus, Photogenics etc.

I tried to demonstrate packages that people were familiar with instead of just focussing too heavily on the core OS functionality (which is very nice and easy to demonstrate). USB works well, the gfx system shows very well etc.

UAE behaved itself for the couple of games I had on there too

Of course I directed people to the webshop on pegasosppc.com, pointing out the resellers and letting them know quite clearly that boards and machines were available now!

OS4 looked really nice, it has come a long way in a year...but no-one actually seemed to have more than one or two applications installed. Whether this is because they don't work/don't work well or because the pre-release is two new I do not know. All I saw was UAE, Pagestream, Hollywood and IBrowse demo. MorphOS clearly shone in this regard.

One criticism I have given to the show organizers was the lack of announcements (and I'm not talking the bloody raffle) with regards to presentations - it would have been much better to stick to the schedule, present centrally (or at a booth) to an entire group instead of just letting people wander up ad-hoc. Again....this is something that has been done a lot better at previous Amiwests.

Steve

Well, it's nice to hear that things went ok in the MOS camp. When I think back I remember AmiWest as being a pretty big deal when people talked about it, but this kinda reflects the whole Amiga world at the mo.

PS. Can you imagine having everything JKD was talking of running at the same time under Windows? Thats one major selling point

everything went pretty smoothly (at least the first day, i couldnt stay for them both) the only thing that bothered me was a little kid who was in dire need ritalin

but everything i saw about MOS impressed me, except one thing witch when i get it will drive me crazy. going into a directory of folder with a ton of files and not being about to hit "a" or "b" and have files with that starting letter show up like in windows so it brings you to files with that as the first pasrt of the name, that and not being about to sort files by name or catigory or time it was created ect...

Quote:it's new. when I have gone to the local amiga meetings here in NY, I run in and install IFX4.5 and ZoneXplorer - just because that's what I want to see running!

but, most people seem to be playing with the operating system. not surprising, i guess

Quote: it's not because we didn't WANT to go, we just couldn't afford it. and in my case, it was not just lack of money, but ill health. (which i'm recovering from).
anyway, it would be great to be at the next years show, assuming i live long enough!

Cecila:

Why on God's green earth would you want to run OS4 over MOS? You have personally used both and its quite obvious that MOS is clearly better..... I hope its not politically based..

@Acill

Thank you for your nice report and JKD too.. As I told JKD on IRC 6 months ago - I would never spend the money to go to Amiwest as an exhibitor or guest. Sadly, it has never AFAIK been promoted properly. I good friend of mine went last year as said "You could have shot a bullet across the room and not hit anyone (from several angles no less) " and felt upset about the $800+ he spent to go.

Dont even ask Genesi what they spent last year on exhibiting!

Bob Scharp did an excellent job with the St.Louis show - due to hard work and effort. Also a better tie in to the Amiga market...

magnetic

@magnetic

Well I think the 'official reports' are due to appear on amigaworld.org and in Total Amiga magazine. These musings here are just that, thoughts on a market that the bottom appears to have dropped out of.

Do you really think no effort was spent?

What the hell do you mean by a better tie-in with the Amiga market - there was no St Louis show last year was there?

Do you really think that every avenue (budget permitting) was not explored?

In my musings (largely because of my negative mood), I forgot to say thank you to the show organizers for continuing to make the effort where so many have stopped or can't be bothered. I noticed no-one else said thank you either.

IMO The majority of the fault lies with the apathy of the users. I'm sick of people moaning about lack of hardware and an OS...then when two come along at once, it's some other excuse not to buy or not to attend the show.

I know how much you did to promote Pegasos/MOS but please don't rag on the SACC guys:

This market is not one that can support big shows, in expensive locations with lavish promotional budgets...imagine the loss if they'd gone into one of the nice showrooms downtown or even into the Holiday Inn location that has been so popular in past years. Heck just an advert run in the San Jose Mercury News would have pushed it even further into the red.

Guys turned in from NY this year (again)...knowing that they had nothing to sell..but they still turned up to promote the platform...that's making the effort. Without that kind of effort (and expense) the market will finally gasp.

For what it's worth...I think the arguement "if you build it, they will come" ... is largely false and that applies to the shows too unfortunately

Sincerely,

Steve

[edit] P.S. It's easier to criticize than be constructive. Why don't you help them promote it? The core group is dwindling and also fairly gutted about the turnout, I guess they'd welcome some good ideas from new blood...[edit]


[ Edited by JKD on 2004/7/27 22:03 ]

JKD

I am sorry if my post seemed rough. I guess I was in a critical mode. You know, I've got this rep for being Mr.Positive but I have to speak the truth.

The Amiwest guys deserve a medal for even pulling off a show and are the only ones in North America that do it. However, I do feel that in a market such as the Amiga one, an only Amiga show is impossible to be profitable. They could have opened it up to other vendors and users. Bill it like an "Alternate Computing (or OS) show" Have BeOs and Atari guys there, etc, there are lots of ideas...

Anyway I feel grateful to them for doing it just dont agree with the way it was done
If that makes sense.

magnetic

Quote:
I don't agree.

You can tell them what you want, even convince them that's a great machine...
=> How many of them will actually point their browser to www.pegasosppc.com ?
=> Then how many will make the leap to buy something in a dealer which could leave hundred of km away from them when they could just leave the show with the board in the hands ?!

If boards are not available, better stop advertising.

Boards *have* to be available.

Leo.

Quote:I am an artist - first and foremost. i don't do politics, and NEVER have. i leave that nonsense to others.

and this is not about running "OS4 over MOS". this is about checking out whatever is out there that is Amiga. I was asked to come to this Amiga Meeting, I installed IFX because I happen to be able to do that in my sleep (at this point), and I wanted to test it out! Plus, it was a kind of "thank you" to those that had extended the invit to me.

Plus, as IFX works well on an AmigaONE, i want to be able to honestly tell people that. Kermit has - for years - treated me with kindness and respect. My response is loyalty. that is my nature, and the way i was brought up.

even though i have never made a dime from any NovaDesign sales, if I can help Kermit make some money, I'm more than happy to do it. If people out there with AmigaOne's are thinking of getting IFX, then anything I can do to help.......
That is my motivation.

Amiga is about sharing knowledge, and having fun with a computer. it's NOT about "politics".

you may feel that "MOS is clearly better". I'm not a programmer nor a hardware person. I am a USER. And (for those that don't know), I have also Used windows and Macs PROFESSIONALLY. On films and series that are shown on TV. Using computers is not just a hobby, it's my career.

MOS and OS4 are not ready for "Prime Time", literally. Amiga once was. Many people working on graphics and effects in TV/films started (like me) on Amigas.

Yes, lots of cool things can be done with MOS and OS4. And if we concentrate on that - and NOT the Damn Politics, maybe Amiga (in all it's various incarnations) can continue to give pleasure to it's users.

cecilia, Emmy Winner
not politician

Hi cecilia,

"Emmy Winner"

Could you elaborate some more about this?

And what were you're thoughts after seeing and playing with an AmigaOne and OS4?
I did like what I saw a while back.

Bye,

Spidey