-------------- The Amiga in the lands of Viriato(*) ----------------  Being asked by Piter to write a text for Imazine about the Amiga in Portugal ive started doing this text hoping that it will contribute to something... im not sure to what :-) .. Still here it goes... Well ive only started medling with Amigas about 2 years ago (whith an A600)... Until then what i thinked about them was that they where great games machines but nothing more ... ya know, the stuff that the majority of the ppl think about them. I did know a guy who had an Amiga (an A500) and the guy was a real AmigaFreak.. ya know the kind.. joking about the graphics and sound capabilitys of the PCs and (*) Viriato was an ancient hero that fought against the roman ocupation of Lusitania, the name that was given to the lands that now are part of Portugal. jumping on the throat of who ever said that the amiga was just a games machine.. now he owns a (sorry for the blasfeme word :)) PC and i own a full blown Amiga 1200 (well it could be bether.. i could own an A4000 hehehe). Still he influenced me a bit and i think that if i now have an Amiga its in part because of him... Where i want to get whith this? I dunno.. it seems ive started writing and things just keeped craling in.. STOP THAT! ok.. sorry:) ... back to my main topic.. In Portugal the Amiga has been around for quite some years (i think it apeared way back in 1985... good old times when PCs where dwelling whith CGA and the only sound they emited was from the speaker...). The Amiga was almoust a complete succes.. it selled well (hell! whith those graphics, sound and price tag who could resist it?) considering that it was not a very affordable computer... most of the ppl (read teenagers/kids) where buying Spectruns and aspiring to have money to buy an Amiga. But still for those who could afford it the Amiga was THE home computer to have and PeeCees where only bought for business (who said that managers where smart persons?). Stuff like atari (notice the non capitalized A? heheeh) didnt even had a chance to be impnlated in the market, so thats why now we have a C= filial in Portugal and theres no atari filial.. (btw ...until now ive only met 2 persons who owned an atari!!!). So having a soo good apearence in Portugal the Amiga must be a very well estabelished computer, i ear ya saying... heemmm wrong. Unfortunatly the Amiga suffered a lot in the incopetent hands of C=... firts was the problem that they seated in the existing architecture and let PeeCees reached and almoust surpass the Amiga capabiltys, but this was not a fault of portuguese C=, theyr fault was that they never tryied pushed the higher Amigas to the business arena so the computer that realy had success in Portugal was the A500 (and even this one whithout any kind of publicity besides the publicity made by Amiga owners) being the other ones (specialy the A3000) bought by ppl who where interested in working whith graphics, so the picture that ppl starting to have about Amigas was that it was a great computer if ya want only to play games or to work whith graphics (specialy video), not a computer ya want to buy if ya want to do "serious" work. So now the computer arena is completly dominated by the PCs being the Amiga a marginal computer. Still things arent all that bad... the A1200 bringed a bit of fresh air to the Amiga, so ppl who where thinking in selling their A500 (hey the Amiga its great but the A500 was starting to show its age..) to buy a PC thinked better and started buying A1200... the problem is that the majority of the ppl buying new Amigas are realy upgrading from the A500 or, like me, from the A600 (wich by the way its selling also very good to newbies since its very cheap). If the Amiga is still selling to newbies its certanly not thanks to C= who has a a marketing of almoust 0 towards the Amiga (Well... correction... there seems to be a bit of marketink of the CD32... but the problem whith this one is that there are few shops selling them..). The great majority of the ppl dont even know that the Amiga has wordprocessors, spreadsheets, databases never mind knowing that the majority of the Amiga software and its OS its light years ahead of the PeeCee. To give ya a better example of how badly the Amiga its known here, recently i've read in a newspaper an article about the new MacIntrashes that had two processors (Motorola and Intel) so that they could emulate Peeces as being a novelty, like if the Amiga wasent emulating other computers for years and years (MacIntrashes included.). Soo, to give ya a better idea, the Amiga is still selling because there are ppl like me "brainwashing" other ppl. The big problem is that to do the "brainwash" the subject must know a bit of computers. Hell, the Amiga is a lot better than PeeCees but a person needs to understand why having a good GUI or working in a multitasking environment is so good, in short they have to suffer a bit whit MS-DoG and Winslows.., but most of the ppl who buy PeeCees buy them as electrodomestics and known next to nothing about omputers... well i dont want to seem arrogant but it pisses me when ppl that cant tell the diference of a bit from a byte try to argue whith me... like an attourney at law friend of mine that bought a blow house PC running at 66 MHZ whith a huge hardisk and a Novell (pseudo)network just to run Winslows... ya never guess what Wordpro he is using.. yes.. that crap short excuse of wordpro that comes bundled whit winslows... and still he try to argue whith me! argghhhhh.. Anyway the Amiga is in a critical place right now in Portugal. Or it can survive as a home computer or it will completly disapear. Hopefuly things seem to go in the first direction since the A600 its selling ok (well its realy cheap! 52.000 escudos for an A600 whith an HardDisk!, being 1 dolar = 160 escudos ) soo perhaps the Amiga 600 still has a future as the Spectrum of the 90s at least in Portugal. And since most Amiga owners turn into Amiga freaks then when the kids that now buy the A600 grow up and start looking for a better computer they will get the A1200 or the A4000 or (when it cames out) the A5000. About the CD32... humm well thereis some marketing from C= (well it was a surprise also to me to ear comercials in the radio about the CD32) but i doubt that it will make the needed inpact here in Portugal, mainly because the consoles (specialy Sega) has a great marketing behind them (to be completly honest even i would be conviced to buy one if i only wanted to play games and didnt know that they are inferior to the Amigas) But, still, i may be wrong... To end the article two other subjects: the portuguese amiga scene and piracy. Well im not in the Amiga scene but as far as i know theres nothing back here that can be called a scene. Well there are some isolated guys trying to promote the Amiga but there arent any kind of groups (humm... im not sure but it seems to exist a Amos programing group, but dont quote me on that), at least that i know of (well there are some jerks that call themselves ACE PO but the only thing they do is to spread pirate soft and rip off the other groups intros from the games puting their lamer poor excuse of intros). And there are also about 5 or 6 bbs dedicated to the Amiga. But nothing more... well im planing staring a diskmag but since its i who is doing all the work its only in the first fases... well if ya want to help me fell free..:). About piracy... well much have been said about piracy and how it is driving developers away from the Amiga... not wanting to take sides i would like just to point out that at least here in Portugal or wee have piracy and Amiga or no Amiga at all! And thats all! I hope you find any kind of interest in this article and sorry for the low level of readability but im not very used to write articles so when, i do i start tiping everithing that cross my mind about that subject im writing about... like ive done right done... arghh.. sorry :) Gonçalo Valverde, physics student, proud A1200 owner  //  \\ // bitnet: fnotme at ptearn   \X/ internet: fnotme at ptearn.cc.fc.ul.pt or fedaykin at scosysv.cc.fc.ul.pt (UniX and Xwindows forever!) (and Amiga also:) ) Edycja: Piter