mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) (10/23/87)
Yet another chance to vent steam at CBM. <Let's look at this more closely. There are still tons of <A1000's out there, so I see no reason why you couldn't sell your <memory add-on board at a user group to an A1000 owner. Ok, let's try. I've got a 2-month old ASDG minirack C with an 8M/4 (4 meg, expandable to 8). I'm going to continue to write off the earlier memory card I already sold used. Anyone out there wanna pay $1450 for that mini-rack C and 8M/4? Offer stops being good if you can't get me a check before the A2000 tradein stop. <I'll say it again - whoever believes this is clearly in the minority <based on the overwhelming success of our trade-in program, and our <current sales volume. Yeah, the trade-in is a nice things. It almost makes up for no expansion standard, and then changing it in the middle of the game. Almost. <>>Gee, what a neat buy-back program. Something else to leave me stuck <>>with obsolete hardware. <> <>Yeah, I'm pretty disenchanted with Comode-or myself. < <You guys MUST be kidding ! < <I bought a VCR a long time ago. <It doesn't have HQ. <It doesn't have MTS. <It doesn't have eighty gizillion nice features. < <Nobody offered me an upgrade on that. Does the spiffy new VCR work with same TV set that the old one works with? <The car I bought several years ago is not as nice as the new ones. Do you have to renovate your garage to get that nice new car into it? <My five year old calculator has no upgrade policy. Do you have to rewire your house to use the new calculators? <Whats the deal ? I have, sitting on my desk an A1000. It cost me $1295 + tax. Street value is probably about $500. Plugged into it is a rack using a standard bus. It costs $1350 + tax, or about the same as the A1000. Street value on the *chips* is > $1000. Guess which one is useless if I upgrade? Guess how many times I've been bitten by a company being wishy-washy about expansion standards? Guess which *single* company was responsible. "The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from." <I guess if you were running things, we'd have consumer <protection groups making so that you had to upgrade everything for free. <Of course this would cause the cost of innovation to exceed any <potential benifits, leading to a complete halt in any effort to <innovate. Nah. Merely require people calling something a "standard" not to change it. <The price of buying electronics today is that they depreciate. Better <electronics will be available in the future at a better price. Ah, that's why my old system went for 6 years and three different CPUs, and *all* the old cards still worked on it. Nuts, the disk drives were from the system before that one. <Inherently, the A2000 has many more capabilities than the A1000. Giggle. Snicker. Guffaw. Let's see: IBM-PC compatability. I can buy two IBM-PC *systems* for the cost of the upgrade. And those two IBM-PC systems are worth the same as the IBM-PC compatability on the A2000: zip. Expansion slots. All I've gotta do is wait for the 2000-n-1. And that should cover the cpu upgrade slot, too. Video expansion. Yup, that my A1000 can't do. More chip ram. Hey, that's two. Well, maybe. Have to wait and see. ROMed OS. That I can do on the A1000. 9 Meg of RAM. That I can do on the A1000. TOY clock. Got one already (had one since three months after I bought my A1000). A keyboard that hurts my fingers. That I don't want. No place to store the keyboard. Ditto. I count two - and that could well be one if Bryce has his way. Even then, it'd almost be worth downgrading to an A2000 to have that video option and assured more chip ram. If only the true cost of the downgrade weren't more like $1500, and I had some assurance that I wouldn't have to go through this again next year. In other words, many is <= 2. Or maybe 3, if you like the IBM compatability and think that paying three or four times the cost of a clone is worth it to get it into the box with your Amiga. <The fact we offer any upgrade at all does not alter the fact that your <machine still runs, and does everything we said it would as well as we <would. You bought something, and you got a fair deal. Correct. The upgrade isn't the problem. It's the incredibly Charlie Brown act with the expansion specs, and the implied "if you fail to upgrade, you have no one to blame but yourself" that came from you guys. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't even consider upgrading. <The upgrade is not on a par with the second coming. We do not claim <this. However, it IS pure gravy. It gives you an option. We are under <no obligation to offer this. Its a pretty damn nice thing to do. Yeah, it's a nice thing to do. About the same as the Apple upgrade for old Mac owners when the Fat Mac came out - except that upgrade didn't leave people stuck with old expansion products that wouldn't work on the new machine. People bitched about that, too. For about the same reasons - they didn't feel like it was really an option, as they'd be left out in the cold in the future if they failed to upgrade. But at least they didn't have to figure out what to do with old expansion products. <I'm sorry you don't like the basic realities of buying something, and <having something better come along later. Ah yes - something better! The new, improved Zorro ][. EXACTLY like the old one, except the old one won't work in it, and vice versa! And wait, next year we'll put hydrodexoyribobenzene in it, so it'll be even BETTER!!! See figure 1. <Perhaps a discussion of the inherent faults of innovation and <improvement should be moved to comp.stone.age or net.electonics.tube <or net.count.with.sticks. A discussion of innovation certainly don't belong in any newsgroup discussing machines designed by CBM. Or can you show me something about the A2000 that's innovative? Not the CPU slot - been done before, several times. Not the IBM-PC & <other stuff> in the same box - ditto. Not the 68020 upgrade on an Amiga - ditto. Not the possiblity of running <other stuff> tools and Unix at the same time - ditto. Not more CHIP ram; that's not an innovation, that's just more of an old thing. <What the hell are you bitching about? CBM acting like CBM has always acted. <You don't have to upgrade to an A2000. Hardware suppliers *still* <sell memory and hard disks for the A1000. Ok, so where do I buy an ethernet card in Zorro I? Unless I'm lucky enough to find a dealer that still has a few in stock. <I hope support for the A1000 does indeed dry up. <I hope the A1000 does indeed die. CBM is working hard to make your hope come true. <(Commodore wants another C64, and is capable of doing it with the <A500... for better or worse) Yeah, CBM could well turn the A500 into another C64. Of course, the C64 was worth more as spare parts than as a computer. Best thing I ever did for some friends was wean them from the C64 to a real machine with a decent multi-tasking OS. And the entire system cost less than the A500 cpu retails for today. <mike P.S. - one person expressed concern via email at seeing me (normally willing to defend the Amiga to the death) bashing at C/A. I'm not bashing at C/A. Amiga did a great thing. To bad the company died. I'm bashing at CBM. Different thing entirely. -- And then up spoke his own dear wife, Mike Meyer Never heard to speak so free. mwm@berkeley.edu "I'd rather a kiss from dead Matty's lips, ucbvax!mwm Than you or your finery." mwm@ucbjade.BITNET
ugmiker@sunybcs.uucp (Michael Reilly) (10/23/87)
[line eater... what line eater..?]
Well, I cant figure this out, you *love* your amiga, but the
company that owns it is upgrading it, and now you talk about it
like it is worthless, you spent "$4000" (your amount) on a machine
that you are willing to just give up on.... If you don't want a
2000, dont buy one, if you do want one, buy it, do you really think
the 1000 market will "dry up" ????? Damn, I am mad at commodore also,
I have to listen to all these happy people with thier new computers
(the 2000), it makes me jealous, (like a person with a '85 car being
jealous of a person with a '88 car) but hey, I am jealous of people
with an external drive, and you have four MEG ???, I would kill for
that...
As I see it (which of course is as nobody else see's it :-),The
only real advantage of the 2000 is the plug in boards, thus bringing
down expansion prices, but hey, the 2000-and-1 does that
(thanks perry!!!!),
also, I really don't want IBM compatiblility, if I wanted to follow the
leader and use my computer for strictly business, I would have bought
an IBM instead of MY AMIGA (GOD FORBID :-)
mike(r)
p.s. sorry about the babbling, but this thread was really starting to
annoy me...
DISCALIMER---- I DISCLAIM EVERYTHING....EVEN MY DISCLAIMER.....
Mike Reilly
University of Buffalo Computer Science
csnet: ugmiker@buffalo.CSNET
uucp: ..!{nike|watmath,alegra,decvax}!sunybcs!ugmiker
BITNET: ugmiker@sunybcs.BITNET <-OR-> ACSCMPR@ubvmsc.BITNETbryce@hoser.berkeley.edu (Bryce Nesbitt) (10/26/87)
In article <5596@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) writes: > >Yeah, it's a nice thing to do. About the same as the Apple upgrade for >old Mac owners when the Fat Mac came out - except that upgrade didn't >leave people stuck with old expansion products that wouldn't work on >the new machine. Go one upgrade more... to the Mac plus. They changed the connectors! (Sound familiar?). The plus has mini-8 connectors where the older Mac had D-9's. This left people with all sorts of incompatible cables and plug ins. To top things off they removed the +5 and +12 volt power so thunderscan and the like were so much garbage. Remember, those ports are the only expansion connectors anything less than a Mac SE has. Adaptors are possible, however the same is true for many of the A500/A1000/ A2000 problems. Apple charged an arm and two legs for the 512K upgrade. (Which is probably why so many third parties offered it cheaper) Did I mention single sided disks? Or how about the ROM upgrade? It comes bundled with a double sided disk drive for the bargain price of just $300... and nobody seems to be discounting that one, even. ROM upgrades on the Mac are at least $75... consider that $15 Kickstart a real bargain. >"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose >from." That sums it up perfectly. I sure hope the "bus of the month" club subscription is over. "Keyboard of the week" is another historical Commodore favorite. The A1000 keyboard was fine. The A500 keyboard is as good or better. The A2000 keyboard needs some help. |\ /| . Ack! (NAK, SOH, EOT) {o O} . bryce@hoser.berkeley.EDU -or- ucbvax!hoser!bryce (") U "Here. This'll shoot the lips off a cockroch" -Freedom Fighter
cs313s02@uhccux.UUCP (Cs313s02) (10/27/87)
In article <5596@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) writes: ><My five year old calculator has no upgrade policy. > >Do you have to rewire your house to use the new calculators? Nothing that drastic. But my new calculator refuses to talk to peripherals for my old calculator. And the manufacturer doesn't buy back my old calculator 8^> ><The price of buying electronics today is that they depreciate. Better ><electronics will be available in the future at a better price. > >Ah, that's why my old system went for 6 years and three different >CPUs, and *all* the old cards still worked on it. Nuts, the disk >drives were from the system before that one. Funny nobody bashed Big Blue on that too. I had to get rid of several cards on my PeeCee when I upgraded to an AT. The memory cards had to be changes, so was the serial card, HD controller card, Floppy controller, and what-have-you... And IBM didn't buy back my old PeeCee 8^). >Yeah, it's a nice thing to do. About the same as the Apple upgrade for >old Mac owners when the Fat Mac came out - except that upgrade didn't >leave people stuck with old expansion products that wouldn't work on >the new machine. People bitched about that, too. For about the same >reasons - they didn't feel like it was really an option, as they'd be >left out in the cold in the future if they failed to upgrade. But at >least they didn't have to figure out what to do with old expansion >products. If Commodore wanted me to pay $800 to upgrade A1000 from 128K to 512K, I would have shot them in the head. You actually Apple's "upgrade" as being more reasonable than CBM's?!? Commodore didn't ask you to up- grade from 128K to 512K, then to 1Meg, then to an SE (one more slow than the Plus, which had ZERO), did they? Of course Mac peripheral worked from "upgrade" to upgrade, because nothing much is changed, other than amount of memory present. $1,000 is certainly a reasonable amount to pay for more slots and same amound of memory as $1,000 spent on a Mac doesn't get you even half as much. And Apple didn't buy back people's old Macs. Hack, they don't even have an upgrade program from Mac to Mac-IIs. ><Perhaps a discussion of the inherent faults of innovation and ><improvement should be moved to comp.stone.age or net.electonics.tube ><or net.count.with.sticks. > >A discussion of innovation certainly don't belong in any newsgroup >discussing machines designed by CBM. I agree that there's not that much innovation in the Amiga 2000. But neither are there in IBM's AT, all the zillion and one PC/clones, all the Macs after the original skinny Mac (except the Mac II, of course), or current crop of 386 machines. >Or can you show me something about the A2000 that's innovative? Not >the CPU slot - been done before, several times. Not the IBM-PC & ><other stuff> in the same box - ditto. Not the 68020 upgrade on an >Amiga - ditto. Not the possiblity of running <other stuff> tools and >Unix at the same time - ditto. Not more CHIP ram; that's not an >innovation, that's just more of an old thing. If there's not enough innovation to excite you, then just don't take up the upgrade offer. Wait for a 68020 machine to come out, and see if that excites you. If you're really happy with your current machine, then there's certainly no reason to upgrade. ><(Commodore wants another C64, and is capable of doing it with the ><A500... for better or worse) > >Yeah, CBM could well turn the A500 into another C64. Of course, the >C64 was worth more as spare parts than as a computer. Best thing I >ever did for some friends was wean them from the C64 to a real machine >with a decent multi-tasking OS. And the entire system cost less than >the A500 cpu retails for today. Well, if you don't believe that market penetration is important, then there's certainly no reason trying to lure developers to work on the Amiga, is there? Although C-64 is a terrible machine, it is very successful. And there are people who are very satisfied with it. Commodore didn't even have an upgrade program for C-64 --> C-128. They were kind enough to offer upgrade for the A2000, and they get shot to pieces for doing so. Perhaps we should make disposable computer: that way, nobody will complain about upgrades... 8=) > <mike >P.S. - one person expressed concern via email at seeing me (normally >willing to defend the Amiga to the death) bashing at C/A. I'm not >bashing at C/A. Amiga did a great thing. To bad the company died. I'm >bashing at CBM. Different thing entirely. Concern?!? Shock is more of the word I'm thinking of... >-- >And then up spoke his own dear wife, Mike Meyer >Never heard to speak so free. mwm@berkeley.edu >"I'd rather a kiss from dead Matty's lips, ucbvax!mwm >Than you or your finery." mwm@ucbjade.BITNET -- Yuan Chang (currently using a stupid student account) UUCP: {ihnp4,uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!cs313s02 ARPA: uhccux!cs313s02@nosc.MIL "Wouldn't you like to INTERNET: cs313s02@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU be an A_m_i_g_o_i_d_ too?!?
haitex@pnet01.UUCP (10/31/87)
ugmiker@sunybcs.uucp (Michael Reilly) writes: >[line eater... what line eater..?] > > Well, I cant figure this out, you *love* your amiga, but the >company that owns it is upgrading it, and now you talk about it >like it is worthless, you spent "$4000" (your amount) on a machine >that you are willing to just give up on.... If you don't want a > (-: Partially deleted :-) > As I see it (which of course is as nobody else see's it :-),The >only real advantage of the 2000 is the plug in boards, thus bringing >down expansion prices, but hey, the 2000-and-1 does that > (thanks perry!!!!), >also, I really don't want IBM compatiblility, if I wanted to follow the >leader and use my computer for strictly business, I would have bought >an IBM instead of MY AMIGA (GOD FORBID :-) > > > mike(r) > >p.s. sorry about the babbling, but this thread was really starting to > annoy me... >DISCALIMER---- I DISCLAIM EVERYTHING....EVEN MY DISCLAIMER..... > >Mike Reilly >University of Buffalo Computer Science >csnet: ugmiker@buffalo.CSNET >uucp: ..!{nike|watmath,alegra,decvax}!sunybcs!ugmiker >BITNET: ugmiker@sunybcs.BITNET <-OR-> ACSCMPR@ubvmsc.BITNET Mike, I don't know about you, but I've been hearing noises about a 1M chip ram up-grade for the A2000 (A500 ???) and this will not be retro-fitable to the A1000. If this does apply to the A500, how long do you think new software releases will be runnable on our A1000's? It makes me nervous. Wade W. Bickel UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!pnet01!haitex ARPA: crash!pnet01!haitex@nosc.mil INET: haitex@pnet01.CTS.COM