The Heckler
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The Heckler
|
One, two, three ... how many more?
Well, this is this month's question. After the summer wasn't sure of himself, if he should fry us with dry heat or steam us up with extreme sultriness, life in the fall will not be any easier. Haage & Partner recently announced an Amiga emulator based on QNX.
To be honest ... sometimes I have problems when buying coffee. Did that brown powder from last week taste good? Should I try another one? Or was it the coffee-cream, the half-life period of which possibly already had passed?
Amiga users belong to a dying race. The old hardware gradually moulders; it urgently needs to be replaced. By the week now new boards, emulators, operating systems - and those which want to be one - are announced, and now another emulator based on an operating system, which we already have heard of (QNX).
A technical evaluation will only be possible after its availability. But in a strategic sense this emulator appears ill-timed. Who will buy it? Who wants to buy it? Or is it just a stimulating effect to hurry up AMIGA Inc.?
Be it as it may ... the situation reminds me very much of a fight in bygone times. WarpUP or PowerUP? The end is known to everybody: insolvencies, corporate stand-still, fillibusters and mutual recriminations.
Should I stay on my old machine? Or will it after all be a bPlan board? AmigaONE wants also to be bought, and what is with all those many toys, which AMIGA Inc. has promised us in the appearance of the better PDA?
Again the time has come to remind the involved parties of one fact: The market is small. And things will be bought only when a clear course is visible. Too many Amiga users have made mis-shoppings in the past. Hence, what is to be done?
Solution: Wait and see, and have a cup of tea! No hasty sales of half-way approaches, as long as it is not evident whether an enterprise again needs some quick money or indeed markets a solid, reasonable hard- and software technology.
The well known "Süddeutsche Zeitung" [newspaper in South Germany] wrote on 31-Aug-2001 on page 21 ("Computer branch in a recession - Discovery of Slowness") of customers' weariness with spending lots of money for subjectively unnecessary techniques. Even if this article more or less covered the new generation of Intel and AMD processors - the recent lull in the semiconductor area is caused by market saturation in this sector -, we should not hesitate to investigate critically and with sound financial attitude all new developments considering their actual quality and necessity.
But I cannot read out of the coffee grounds if this new competitor will have a positive or negative consequence upon the Amiga market. Therefore my advice from above: Drink some tea - maybe that will help?!
Live long and prosper
Yours
Ralf Driesner <global-dries@gmx.de>
