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Expecting

© John Chandler

I was hoping to have more information to discuss this month, and possibly even an AmigaOne to play with, but best laid plans and all that. The situation at the moment is tantalisingly close to what Amiga users have been eagerly anticipating this year. The AmigaDE is making it to computer stores in North America and soon the rest of the world, the AmigaOne and AmigaOS 4 are due shortly, as are the Pegasos and MorphOS. Frustrations are high as everything still seems slightly out of reach for the majority of people. Unfortunately, public communication from Amiga Inc. themselves has been few and far between, leading to renewed speculation. It's a complicated issue for them - say nothing and the doomsayers assume the worst, mention what's in the pipeline and people adopt a "well we'll believe it when we see it" approach.

As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft's partnership has already lead to the first examples of the AmigaDE hitting mainstream stores. Initial shipments have been of basic samples of the game packs, with more game releases arriving soon. The market is still in its infancy, but things are looking interesting, though myself and others believe that applications software will yield the "killer app" that will really explode the market. There are certainly indications of some important additions to the productivity side of the DE, including video and graphical tools. It's only a matter of time as there are already a few utilities and tools available if you know where to look, but nothing major... so far.

The AmigaOne hardware has been available in limited numbers for some time now, with larger quantities due about now. Eyetech's "EarlyBird" offer allowed prospective buyers to purchase either an AmigaOne with either G3 or G4 PowerPC and SuSE Linux and UAE Amiga emulation software. AmigaOS 4 would then be provided as a free upgrade as soon as released.

A small shipment of the SE (G3) hardware was made this month, but there have been delays with the remainder. The main issue has been that of obtaining supplies of PowerPC processors, unfortunately an all too common problem for smaller companies - on the desktop side of things, Apple (being the main non-embedded consumer of such chips) have the priority and Eyetech didn't receive their batch as expected. This has pushed back release to the middle of January, which isn't too much of an inconvenience when you think about it - and Eyetech have at least extended the EarlyBird offer to match the delay. All being well, you should find a review here January or February.

As regards AmigaOS 4, things are still progressing smoothly and a detailed

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