Competition

Competition

1. Results of the last competition

Seventy-nine readers entered the last competition - a welcome increase over the previous month. Please consider entering again: You can win by answering just two questions.

But now, last month's solutions:

Two participants could not make up their minds between answers 1 and 2, another one between answers 3 and 4. Two readers had ordered OS3.9, but had not received it, and one reader considered the purchase his contribution to AMIGA.

Several participants added comments to their answers to the question of opinion:

Krister S. Skrtic answered the question, has he bought OS 3.9, with »Yes, of course. As long as I use my Amiga I will buy new OS versions. I already own most of the third-party programs in OS 3.9, e.g. Moovid, AWeb, etc., but in spite of this I support the product. Indeed it is an update of the system that I like. And I hope one day to be able to buy OS 4 in PPC code. WarpUp would be nice. :)«

Johan Svensson wants to purchase the new version of the operating system before long: »I haven't bought AmigaOS 3.9 yet, but a friend of mine has it. He let me test it on my A4000 and all I can say is: "It rulez! :-)". Soon I will have it!«

Michael Moritz is happy with OS 3.9 and adds: »I hope the BoingBag with WB-Multitasking will be available soon, I as really miss a PDF-Viewer hosted in the system, which can print coloured(!) PDF pages!!! The AmiDock is in way koool! I had several docks configured within 5 minutes ...«

The opinion of Gerhard Schmid was short and sour: »Not enough novelties, many bugs, too expensive«.

Jan Grabenhorst intends to invest some additional money right away: »I haven't bought it yet, but I plan to buy it in connection with a BlizzardPPC, then I have the latest drivers right with it ...«

Kai Stegemann has a glance into the future: »Let us hope, that AmigaOS 4.0 will be AmigaDE, no holds barred, no problem if it is on the Classic side (Look&Feel ...).«

Andreas Orth did not buy OS 3.9 and continues: »I will buy it only if I will be able to use the tools it contains or if it proves against expectation that it will run on my system (unlike version 3.5).«

Peter Dorn is convinced by OS 3.9: »My system has become more stable and more handy. Many small useful features.«

A first impression from Klaus Moddemann: »I bought OS 3.9, because I was still running 3.0 and could not upgrade to 3.5 because at that time I did not want to spend additional money on the 3.1 ROMs. My impression concerning OS 3.9: It is more stable and a bit faster than the old system. Unfortunately I haven't yet tested all the features, but what I have seen was not quite what I had expected.«

Stephan Kolbe has a positive view of OS 3.9: »Yes, I am satisfied, even if I still can't work out why MagicMenu crashes. No, honestly, the new OS has set some new standards, which really is no bad thing. It is a good collection of tools and apps which, if acquired separately, certainly would have been more expensive.«

Kai Eckardt gave a very detailed answer: »Yes, I bought OS 3.9. Main reason: I want to try to run Genesis as a router. The rest counts for nothing. AmiDock spent just 2 minutes on my WB before I switched it off. :) I don't understand the hullabaloo about it. After all you have all the desktop to place icons on, why such a nonsense? DefIcons is a nice thing, but I am not so sure about VinceEd. All right, you can scroll the text up in a window, but perhaps someone else has noticed that listing a long directory with "dir" cannot be stopped with the spacebar any more. That forces you to use the scrolling function. Possibly there is a way to install the spacebar-stop again which I have not discovered. So, given the choice of answers available, I tend to number 2. Well, yes, I bought it, but I am not satisfied with it. Indeed I think I knew that before I bought it, but I had to have it for Genesis.«

Rudolf Rager writes: »Yes, I purchased OS 3.9 at the fair and I am 99% satisfied. Especially since the installation ran without tricks and no bugs so far. :)) And a supplement to the survey in the last competition concerning the site of the fair: I travelled with two colleagues from beautiful Salzkammergut for eight long hours by car - the next Amiga fair should be in Austria. ;)«

Mario Orth will not buy the update of the operating system: »I acquired OS 3.5 in October 99. Therefore I do not buy a new OS again.«

Andreas Wolf would have welcomed a fair upgrade from OS 3.5: »Until now I have not bought OS 3.9, because I am one of those people that hang back waiting for tests and bug reports, not keen on buying something straight up and being disappointed afterwards. And the price of OS 3.9 does not appear sufficiently attractive; I hope the BoingBags will bring a change. I would have thought that an upgrade price from 3.5 to 3.9 would have been automatic.«

An interesting reason for purchase from Denis Zwornarz: »Not, that I need it (my Scalos-WB is sufficient for me). I rather see it as a kind of "contribution" (not meant in a negative way).«

Karl-Heinz Bader is only partially content. He praises the tool UnArc, but pans the installation script and the documentation.

Uwe Eichhorn picks up on this: »The OS3.9 product (CD on sale) evidently was not tested properly. The installation and program errors could have been avoided. The enclosed documentation is a bad joke.«

Carsten Krahl is generally content, but he misses PPC applications or OS support.«

Andreas Schaumloeffel refers to the topic »PowerPC-AmigaOS«: »For this price there just are too few basic or "valuable" changes.

Above all "H&P" ought to draw back and think it over, including the logic of GENUINE PPC support.«

David Sondermann did not buy the update of the operating system and will not in the future: »I'm dropping support for the Amiga-Classic line. I'd rather wait for a new Amiga system.«

Andre Beer in similar vein: »Only last year I bought OS 3.5 and I probably will not invest in another OS update. I will just wait for the new Amiga ...«

Stephan Karnasch is not willing to update his operating system because of the cost.

Gernod Schomberg is disappointed with OS 3.9: »I am not satisfied by the product, because it offered me only very small improvements. I gave my reasons in detail in the last Amiga aktuell. Besides, BoingBag 2 was released shortly after, making more changes to OS3.9! This is a good way to ruffle even true believers!«

Conclusion:

More than half of the participants had bought OS 3.9, with an overwhelming majority content with the product. In spite of this the comments pro and con are evenly distributed. I can only conclude that people generally are quicker to complain than praise. Perhaps the latter are too busy having fun with their new toy...

.....like the winners of the competition:

1 x Full version of "CDCat": Mattias Karlsson
1 x Full version of "ArtEffect 4": Nicolas Negretti
1 x Full version of "Maxon C++ 4.0 Pro": David Sondermann

Congratulations!