Making Way In The Universe

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Dec 11, 2000

Bizarre as it may seem, there are still a few people out there proclaiming Amiga as vapourware developers and accusing them of having done absolutely nothing since it was spun out from Gateway almost a year ago. Fortunately, these voices are in a minority and not supported by the evidence of Amiga's work over the last few months. 2000 has gone surprisingly quickly, and the Amiga of today is a far healthier concern than the pale imitation it had become since the departure of Jim Collas.

Amiga have had to walk a fine line between saying too much and saying too little this year. Too much and they risk looking unprofessional or stupid when things, inevitably, change - with accusations of hype or vapourware. Too little, and people start to proclaim the death of Amiga (like we don't hear that enough already) or loyal Amiga users and developers feel discarded for pastures new. It's a tricky path, sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong - but from what I've seen and heard they've done a remarkably good job considering, and got it mostly right. From a pure publicity point of view, they've got the message out without much fanfare or hype - the Amiga name is cropping up in all kinds of places, paving the way, subtly, for the AmigaDE launch.

For example, this year I've received a huge number of e-mails from people who are either encountering the Amiga for the first time or rediscovering the Amiga again. I've had people ask me if the AmigaOS runs on their x86 PC or CHRP PowerPC, people interested in legally emulating the Amiga, people dusting off their A1200 to get online, people looking to upgrade an old A2000 or A3000, others asking how they can ditch their PC but ensure file and disk compatibility with the Windows world, even someone who rescued an A1000 from a garage sale and wants to find spare parts.

It's amazing, and yet this is just with the older Amigas - and more than just from a nostalgia point of view. The questions aren't geared towards playing old games or watching old demos, but towards doing all the things many people would lead you to believe is only possible on machines running Windows, with huge amounts of RAM and processor clocks just a whisker from the GHz range: using the Internet, doing word processing and DTP, creating music or multimedia presentations, managing their finances, touching

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