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Test reports
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Welcome to the Arena!
At fairly regular intervals, THE Amiga newsletter [1] reports on the activities in the Amiga Arena. But are wrong if you think that the Amiga Arena is a modern gladiatorial arena where Amiga owners fight to the death with terrifying weapons like keyboards and 3.5" disks. Olaf Koebnik wanted his Amiga Arena [2] to be a support site for Amiga freeware and shareware. Of course there are a huge number (okay, that might be a little overstatement) of sites on the web offering freeware and shareware. The unique thing about Olaf's homepage is the special prices for many shareware programs. Amiga Arena has been operating for two years and this is the first CD-ROM to be released. It is available from APC&TCP [3] for 29.95 DEM. Buyers of this CD-ROM get the same reduced prices for shareware programs as the online visitors. Carten Schroeder sent me an Arena-CD [which was kindly provided by APC&TCP; CS points out] via snail mail so I could take a closer look.
The Amiga Arena-CD
The CD-ROM is about 60% full at 384 MB. A double-click on the CD-ROM icon brings up the root directory with 6 drawers.
Opening the readme file in the main directory gives an overview of the structure of the CD-ROM. You are also informed that the minimum requirements for the programs on the Amiga Arena-CD-ROM are an Amiga with AmigaOS 3.0 or higher and at least a 68020-CPU and 2 MB of Chip-RAM. Since Amiga Arena has an HTML-based interface designed for 800x600 in 16 bits, a graphics board and some Fast-RAM is recommended.
The directory "Texte" contains the legal disclaimers as well as an Editorial and a listing of the contents in text format.
To explore this CD-ROM you have two options. You can stay on the Workbench and click through numerous directories,
or you can open the "Amiga Arena" directory and start the Online- or Offline version of the HTML interface. For Amiga users who don't have a web browser on their hard disk, Olaf Koebnik has included a demo of AWeb3.2, which is opened by double-clicking the "index.html" icon.
The Offline-version includes the "Amiga Arena" pages and also a lot of other sites (mirrored March 2000), which can be used without a net connection. As you might guess, these pages are not mirrored randomly, but have a connection with the programs on the CD. Altogether, the "Homepage" directory contains 126 MB of data, so you may take quite a while to visit them all.
The programs, in a separate directory, are divided into three parts: "Demoversionen" (demo versions), "Vollversionen" (full versions) and "Sonderpreise" (special prices). These take up 192 MB of the disc.
The directory "Demoversionen" is further divided in "Anwender" (applications) and "Spiele" (games) and contains software with limited features, mostly shareware.
"Vollversionen" is a lot more extensive, with several subdirectories. These are not the full registered versions of shareware programs or commercial programs, but programs that were never "crippled" at all. But that doesn't mean that those programs are less attractive than the shareware programs. You can find here pearls like the graphic manipulation program PPT; the accounting software MTRechnungIII; MultiTermKit, Bankmanager and MultiFax from TKR; AmigaAMP; AHI; the multiplayer game FreeCivilisation and much more.
But the real reason for buying this CD might be the directory "Sonderpreise". Here you will find eleven shareware programs, which can be registered for a significantly lower price (some only for a limited time, for example CyberShow until 31th August 2000). The genres range from picture viewer, to databases, to home banking.
All programs on the CD are also available archived in the directory "Programme gepackt". Suitable (un)packers are in "Packer".
Conclusion
The "Amiga Arena" is a carefully prepared CD with an interesting software mixture. Most programs can be found on Aminet-CDs or the Internet, so the price of 29.95 DEM seems a little high. But those who want a really keen special offer price would find this CD-ROM interesting.
[1] http://www.amiga-news.de/Uwe Pannecke <Uwe.Pannecke@t-online.de>
