^^
                                 AmiWest2000
 
                                by Rick Rudge

           The Northwest Amiga Group newsletter, "The NAG Journal"

      Well,   I've  just  arrived  back   from  sunny  California  and
      AmiWest2000.  Even after the shower to wash  off  600  miles  of
      Interstate 5,  I'm still exhibiting that "After Glow"  from  the
      AmiWest2000  show.  The state of the Amiga always  looks  a  lot
      brighter  after  visiting one of these Amiga  shows.   I  highly
      recommend  that Amiga users make a point of attending  the  next
      one closest to them.

      I  was at the Northwest Amiga Group's booth located between  The
      Eyetech  Group Limited and AudioLab's booth.  Also in our  booth
      was  NAG  president Todd C.  Gustafson,  vice-president,  Daniel
      Reichen  and Don Malm as well as Computers Made Easy owner  Jeri
      Elsworth.   I  still managed to spend a lot  of  money  visiting
      Compuquick Media Center and FWD Computing's booths. Other booths
      were  filled  with Amiga vendors,  enthusiasts,  developers  and
      users  groups.  Many of these booths had tables full of software
      and hardware.  Rumors were that there was a shortage of the  new
      Amiga  Software  Developer's Kits (the SDK),  but  you  wouldn't
      know  it by the many stacks of these red SDK boxes available  at
      the Merlancia booth.

      I  enjoyed  talking  with Amiga,  Inc.'s Bill  McEwen,   Randall
      Hughes  and  I'm  so  glad  that they  could  make  it  down  to
      Sacramento,   California from Snoqualmie,  Washington.   I  also
      enjoyed  talking with Amiga celebrities like Derrick Lyle  (yes,
      Derrick Lyle no longer works for Gateway.  He drove up from  San
      Diego  and helped out at the Nova Design booth),  the new  Users
      Group  Network  (UGN)   director,  Bill Borsari  (aka  Tekmage),
      Kermit  Woodall,   Joe  Torre (who is championing  AntiGravity's
      Boxer),  Robert Hamilton (aka Lostman),  AmigaZone's Harv  Laser
      and  UGN's  West  coast  representative,   Joanne  Calhoun  (aka
      Viper).  John Zacharias who helped to organize AmiWest  and  did
      the programming for my favorite e-mail client "AEmail" also  had
      a booth.

      I  really enjoyed talking to the many Amigans that attended  the
      show.  These were folks from as far away as the UK and Asia  but
      most  were from the western continental U.S.  and Canada.   Many
      people  were  so  glad that there was a show close  enough  that
      they  were able to attend.  We had an immediate bond and it  was
      almost  frightening  to  see how similar  our  feeling  were  on
      certain Amiga subjects.

      Bill  McEwen's   presentation   at   the   AmiWest  banquet  was
      spectacular.  He was able to play back many of the  most  recent
      news    interviews.     He   was   also    given    a    special
      presentation/commercial from 1990 featuring famous Blues  singer
      and  Amigan,  BB King and was able to play that for us.   I  was
      able  to  video  tape it and will try my hand  at  typing  up  a
      transcript of Bill's speech as soon as I can.

  
      After  the presentation,  Bill just left the computers  on  with
      the SDK and invited us to play with them.  One computer had  the
      Amiga  SDK  on top of Windows while another one was  on  top  of
      Linux.   The  third computer was a futuristic  laptop  prototype
      From  StrongArm (using no internal moving parts).  In  addition,
      Bill  had  a  Motorola Smart phone and he was  showing  off  the
      Elate/Amiga game that you can play on that.  Hmm,  perhaps  some
      day I can simply phone in these articles in the future. :-)

      I'm no tech-head but from what I saw and played with on the  SDK
      demo, the Amiga has a bright future ahead of it.

            There is so much potential and computing power there.

      Bill  McEwen has fulfilled his promise by bringing out  the  SDK
      (not  bad  for 7 months of ownership).  The rest is  up  to  the
      developers  and to us.  The Amiga developer's workstations  like
      the  D`Amiga  will be available very soon now  in  the  American
      continent;  Amiga hardware by Amiga vendors for Amigans. This is
      very exciting!

      After  the banquet,  there were several vendor parties in  hotel
      rooms  that  went  on into the morning.  Amigans  sure  love  to
      party,  but admittedly,  this time was mostly spent just talking
      about our favorite computer.

                   Please don't hesitate to drop me a line

                                rudge@jps.net