ESCOMMODORE ¾EsCommodore ²----------- ¹By: Unkown Writer ¢I'll get to Branson, Microsoft and PCs in a minute, but first EsCom. So EsCom have bought Commodore, they own the Amiga. Rumours from good sources talk about an A1800. Basically an A1200 with more memory, hard disk, CD etc. costing about 400 pounds. Out in time for Christmas '95. People who have jumped ship to the PC insist that it's only a rumour and couldn't possibly be true, not at that price. Why the hell not? Last year A1200s were selling for as low as 250 pounds. Double speed CD Rom drives are falling fast in price. A computer manufacturer could buy them in bulk for buttons. The price of 68030 chips is about what 68020s cost back then. A 120mb IDE hard disk, forty quid at the most in bulk. Thirty quid perhaps for two more megs of memory? When you THINK about it, an A1200 with 68030, 120mb HD, Dual Speed CD-ROM and 4megs of memory could very easily retail at four hundred. How many Byte salesmen are going to persuade the average punter to pay six hundred quid more for a PC because it ¢has a faster processor and a monitor? Even if the average punter could afford the extra six hundred quid I think that they'd rather spend it on printers and other peripherals. Remember average punters buy their computers from the likes of Byte, they don't build them from parts bought through mail order. The average punter is the person who buys games from the average games software house. The average games software house comprises people who want to write games for the biggest market. Whether that market is Sega, Nintendo or A1800. More memory, faster processor and CD-ROM, equals much, much better games. The purveyors of word processors and spreadsheets don't ignore a large user base of 32 bit machines equipped with hard disk drives. The price is good too because Mr. Average Punter doesn't want to pay five hundred quid for a word processor that takes up 40 megs of his hard disk. No wonder the PC owners are scared, they don't want to go back to a situation where the majority of fun stuff comes out on Amiga and the PC mags are full of spreadsheet reviews. Go round to the home of some PC-owning idiot. Get them to dig out the Encarta CD-ROM, the one that they got free with their crap 486 SX 25 from ¢Freeman's catalogue; which, in four years time when they've paid the last payment, will have cost them nearly three grand, yet will have a second hand value of 50 pence. On *MICROSOFT'S* Encarta CD, look up Microprocessors and Microcomputers, search for Intel, Motorola, IBM etc. After reading a little way, you could be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft invented the PC and that IBM and Intel were mere bystanders. Spit when you realise that the people who compiled this CD-ROM for Microsoft have mentioned Macintosh, Macintosh and Apple Macintosh in relation to the Motorola 680XX series of chips. Is the Amiga mentioned? The Atari ST? Europe's best selling computers? Na-ah. What else have these rats conveniently forgotten to mention, I daren't look up computer operating systems. Encarta, apart from this kind of bias, is a very good product. It contains megabytes of informative text, pictures and sound. Why then does it contain an .exe file that will run under Windows to access this data, yet they couldn't spare a few k to include a program that would allow the data to be accessed in the same way on "non-Windows" machines. Amigas can play .wav files and .fli anims, show gifs and tiffs. ¢When other people have compiled CDs full of pics, sounds and graphics they often include viewer and player programs for the PC, the Amiga and others. Not Microserf. They are flaming scumbag papholes. Bill Gates wants to run the world. And so does Richard Branson. Richard will only be happy when:- 1 You buy a game from a Virgin shop. 2 The game is published by Virgin Games. 3 You play it on a Virgin PC. 4 While you listen to Virgin Radio. 5 To an artist signed to Virgin Records. 6 Whose latest LP can be bought at a Virgin record shop. 7 Whose latest video can be seen on Channel 5 Virgin TV. 8 While you drink Virgin Cola. 9 Etc. Pop 'round to Dixons. Say to the spotty twit in Dixons that you'd like to buy a computer. For use in your home. A home computer. You want games. You want a good user-friendly operating system. You want the ability to use CD-ROMs. You want 32 bit. When he takes you to look at some big PC costing a grand or upwards tell him that you only want to spend half that or less. Repeat the bit about a USER FRIENDLY operating system. He'll tell you that with easy monthly payments you won't even notice the 27.9% APR. In three to four years you could fully own the PC from Dixons. He'll tell you to take no notice of the people coming in to make payments off the 286 and 386 machines that they bought ages ago that run naff all now. ¢If you have good cash burning a hole in your pocket and you are itching to upgrade to a more powerful machine: Don't buy an Amiga 4000, don't spend too much upgrading your present Amiga. Whatever you do DO NOT buy a freaking PC. Wait. The RISC chips are getting cheaper and cheaper. The next generation of machines is just around the corner. The Sega Saturn and other high-powered Jap consoles will redefine the term videogame. The technology will migrate to the desktop machines. In the next two years the people with sense will be buying fantastic RISC workstations, while the morons are still paying off their Pentium storage heaters. ²Please turn page... ¶¶¢Hey, and if we are really lucky, and if there is any justice in this world, EsCommodore or whoever, will be producing RISC based Amigas, if rumours are true, by November 1996. The old Commodore did the research, Hewlet Packard said they will provide the chip. A fantastically fast chip, a chip with a 68000 emulation built in. AmigaDOS will run on this chip. OS legal software will only have to be re-compiled, NOT re-written. If you have seen the Saturn running Virtua Fighting, if you have played Daytona racing in the arcades then you'll hardly believe me when I tell you that the Amiga RISC (if it's built) will eat these systems alive. ¢If the Commodore Pet, was first generation desktop, the C64 etc. second generation, the ST and Amiga etc. third generation and the current high-end machines fourth generation, then the new super-RISC machines are the fifth generation, the new generation, the next generation. You'd be mad to spend more than a few hundred quid on your computing at this point in time. Bender's Renders Eat Deer ;). P.S. Some good news for PC owners! I've been talking to a mate who is a genuine official beta tester for Windows 95. He's got the very latest version and it's excellent. Better than Workbench 3.1 in many ways, worse in others. You can't pull a screen down and view the one behind. It will eat up thirty megs of hard disk space and likes loadsa RAM. However it will allow those of you who own a PC to experience a little of what we Amiga users have had all along. So save up your pennies peecee owning muppets. ’