So Amiga Inc have announced wonderful new machines... which could be up to two years away, or maybe more. And this isn't the first time such announcements have been made.
Hopefully this time is different, in that such announcements will be fulfilled. But this time is different in another way - there are new Amigas appearing now (Access, BoXeR, A5000/6000), new Amigas due to be released before Amiga Inc's ones (InsideOut and Pre-Box). We also have PPC cards already available, with multiprocessing and superfast graphics cards on the way. So if you want a powerful Amiga, it doesn't necessarily mean waiting.
The problem is that Amiga Inc's new machines won't follow on from existing hardware - whether your Amiga is 680x0 or PPC based, it will be 'outdated' by the new Amigas. But... that is two years away, at least. It seems that we have the problem that we are going to have to wait a couple of years until the new machines are going to be released, so that is two years when current Amiga technology is still going to be around. If you bought a top of the range PC now, it would be fairly out of date in two years' time - that's computing for you.
So... if you want a powerful Amiga now, what do you go for? Before, the obvious choice would have been PowerPC, but that is now not the 'official' route. There is an alternative, a PC with the InsideOut card - this will in fact form the developer machine for the new Amigas, but even ehen you're not a developer, it will still give you a powerful Amiga. In this article I'll consider the possible advantages and disadvantages between a PC with InsideOut, and a PowerPC based Amiga (be it based on A1200T, A4000, BoXeR, or whatever). Of course, there will have to be speculation (the InsideOut is not yet released), and it will depend on your own situation what you'd want to go for.
Cost
The important point first! The problem is that it is so difficult to give a figure, especially with the InsideOut. You'll need a PC for this of course, but that depends whether you want a low end Pentium or the latest 400MHz. Most people I imagine will spend a few hundred on getting a reasonable P200. The InsideOut will then cost 400UKP - this includes Siamese software, but no CPU. An '060 is quite expensive, possibly around 200UKP (judging from price differents between '040 and '060 versions of the PPC boards...) So we're talking over 1000UKP at the very least. If you had that money to spend on a PPC Amiga, you could get yourself an A1200T with a fast 603e, and the BVision card when it comes out for your graphics.
Speed
No doubt about it, an '060 InsideOut will give you an Amiga faster than any other 680x0 based Amiga. A 50MHz '060 is already reasonable (about a P100, maybe), and can apparantely run at 66MHz quite happily (P133, maybe?). But it will supposedly be possible to use the CPU in your PC for some tasks. I don't know if this means some system tasks have been patched to use the PC CPU, or if it means you'll be able to write Amiga programs that run on the Pentium, but they say it will speed things up by a factor of 2. An exaggeration, surely, but it should be faster than a normal '060 Amiga. Rating the PPC is difficult - without out a doubt, even the 'low end' 160MHz 603e will beat the fastest '060, the problem is that PPC software is needed, and that is rather thin on the ground at the moment. For 680x0 software, you'll either have an '040 (up to 4 times slower than an '060), or you'll buy an '060 anyway (expensive). Remember, the InsideOut will run all your software at whatever speed it is capable of. Another problem with PPC is that even if a program is available in PPC format, you have to go out and buy it, even though you may already own the 680x0 version. In the PPC's favour, you could argue that although a lot of your software will be in 680x0 code, that will be the software which doesn't need speed, and will run quite happily on an '040 (and plenty of Amiga users would be upgrading from an '030, anyway). When it comes to the software which needs the speed (be it Doom, Quake, a 3D raytracer, image processors, picture/movie/sound players), we can hope that there will be some available in PPC format - so even though there may be relatively little PPC programs, there will be enough to make it worthwhile.
Graphics, sound, etc
This is where the InsideOut has the advantage, as it can make use of all those nice PCI cards shoved into the PC. In particular, the graphics card, although I presume you can make use of things like sound and networks cards, and so on. Eyetech have recently been advertising their EZPC Tower (which is an A1200T with a PC inside too), showing how effectively the Amiga can make use of cheap PC hardware - the InsideOut makes use of this too, and makes it even cheaper.
On the PPC route, there is some hope at least, and even better, you can avoid using Zorro slots. A BlizzardVision (should be out by the time you read this) with 4MB VRAM is selling at 155UKP at some places (White Knight). There is news of a version of the Melody sound card being released for the A1200 which doesn't require Zorro slots. Of course, PCI would still be better, as it's not only cheaper, but you have far greater choice - but at least you no longer have to spend loads of money on Zorro slots, and then loads more money on an 'average' graphics card...
Ease to Upgrade to
The user's current set up will probably be the deciding factor, despite all the above factors. I mean, if you already have a PC, you only need to sell your existing Amiga, and buy the InsideOut, where as someone without a PC will probably prefer to upgrade their existing Amiga to a PPC system rather than selling it all up and spending a grand or more in one go. Probably.
Compatibility with Other Platforms
This is another consideration. The InsideOut route will of course let you run Windows - sure, you may not like it, but it's useful to have it there (such is the way with monopolised markets...) There's OS/2 and Linux, and there will be new operating systems too: BeOS, and of course, the developer AmigaOS 4 :) On the emulation front, it seems that running MacOS is not so straightforward - you will probably be better of running Fusion or Shapeshifter on the InsideOut (although there is now a PC version of Fusion, although you'll need a fast processor for emulation on the x86 to be faster than native code on an '060, if it's possible at all yet).
A PPC Amiga will of course give you MacOS, assuming Fusion gets ported. Maybe we will see a way of running BeOS too, although that can't be guarunteed. Hopefully a port of PCx (or PC Task?) will give PC possibilities, and on a fast PPC, you should be able to get a low end Pentium - barely enough for Windows '95 then...
Mark