TITLE:CEBIT'94 - Exclusive(!) report PALETTE:0223 0779 099b 09a9 3 HAVING MY DAILY DESASTER 2"Where the hell is Hall 7?" 1Over all these years having passed by, COMMODORE had it's place in Hall 1 on the humungously huge exhibition area of Hannover, so this was a legitimate request over all the days. Now COMMODORE's presentation was transferred to Hall seven, one of those ordinarily exhibition halls. The worst: INTEL was in the same room. Frevel! Blasphemy! And what the heck? COMMODORE invested some money and had let design a new presentation area. No more nice grey walls to be covered with tags and stickers. No, it seemed like a giant baby took some Lego (tm) and in a flush of anger, threw it to the ground where those clevermen from COMMODORE decided to take it as their exhibition castle. Castle? This was the best way to describe it. A 2"Bollwerk" 1against the scene. Normally, COMMODORE had a huge center in the edge of hall one with some very nice walls in addition to their own triste grey buildings, but this time there were wals directly to the sides (and think of the cute Japanesemen standing at their place seeing how sceners cover their displays with stickers and graffitti). 2Yes, COMMODORE finally found a way to 2tame the scene. Something new from the hardware there? Nope. Oh, well. There was the new 2A4000T1, which in fact ran under KS3.1 and also the Workbench got updated to 3.1 (4.dunno that is). This might mean, we 3.0XX useres ain't the youngest generation afterall. New money may be spend on KS and only the A3000 freaks were happy with this, since in the end, most of them already got this new KS over dark channels. There also was a 2CD-ROM for A1200/A40001. In fact, it is the CD32-piece of cute crap in a degenerated AMIGA-white box. It doesn't need the AT-bus, but gets connected over the ZORRO, thus we might expect a new hole in our ordinary ordinateur. At least the A3000 users might be happy as they will be able to use it, too. It is due to be available in May and as experts guess might not be much more expensive than 300,-DM after three months of sale. Pro: The to expect low prize and full compatibility to the CD32. Cons: It will only read real AMIGA structure, no PC-format and hardly photo-disks. 2APPLE presented the PowerPC. 1Interesting? Yes, since the means, COMMODORE could have been releasing the new RISC-generation at the CEBIT already. As they have the rights like APPLE has now. Instead, where is the PowerAMIGA? Easy to say. A RISC-processor with calculated costs of not more than 1/3 of the custom 68030/040 would mean the sudden death of the A4000 row. Here we again see that only COMMODORE makes it possible. They kill their own machines if they sell the new RISC-boards and they destroy their firm if they don't, since the concurents have now the power of an A4000/040... multiplied by ten! In the end, I have gotten the prove! 2DENNIS from the DESKTOP DYNAMITE-package 2doesn't work on the A4000 1with the beta-generation KS 3.09 and higher... Not that it will kill a frog, but the specialists from COMMODORE took ten minutes to find that out - on an A4000T! Now we know, what they've studied for at last. The promised 2adaptor for the CD32 1is out. Not that it will bring so much for the user and the market, but if one prefers this kind of working instead of having a "real" AMIGA with CD-ROM... COMMODORE did a lot for the name of the CD32 and as time goes by, some real promising games are getting released. I still wonder, why they've presented 2GALAGA on CD-ROM1, but that's another story. At the moment, it seems like the CD32 found its niche due to the low cost and with the seperate CD-ROM for A1200/4000, the hole schedule might become interesting to the CD-producing firms. My suggestion to COMMODORE: Take the A4000T off the market before it's out and exchange the processors with two RISC-processors at 60MHZ at least, make sure that the AAA-chipset will be easy to install, give it 12MB RAM and sell it as Workstation at 10000,-DM. This will cure the name by not killing the A4000 and the highend-user (and STEVEN SPIELBERG) will love it. Too bad, they didn't do it on this years CEBIT. This would have stunned much more than those bloody ugly banal 2typewriters 1COMMODORE presented this year in addition(!).