| If you look carefully at each one, and not get sucked in by sales
hype...you will probably choose the Amiga. Second choice, the MAC.
Of course, this all depends upon what applications you have in mind.
I shopped around, and decided on the Amiga. I have never regreted
the choice, the machine is fantastic. Don't let people snow you
into thinking there is no software for it either. There is a lot
of GREAT software for it NOW. You may save a few bucks buying an
ST from Atari, but you are also giving up a lot. IBM clones...with
the Amiga, you can have full IBM compatibility, monochrome and
color...even at the same time!
If you live in the Boston area, take a drive to the Memory Location
on route 16 in Wellesley. You will be amazed by all the Amiga stuff
they have. And you can see all of it in action.
My opinion, buy an Amiga.
Randy
|
| Boy, you came to the right place to ask about Amigas. I have had
mine for a year now, and I have just bought a 1 meg memory board.
I can tell you that the Amiga's potential is only beginning to be
tapped.
After all the competitors have taken their best shot, the Amiga
still has more features, right out of the box, than any other machine
that I know of.
I hope I am not boring you with this, but in case you don't know, the
Amiga has a REAL multitasking OS, (The Mac, Apple][GS, and AtariST do not).
Right out of the box, the Amiga has multiple graphics modes, but
a quick summary follows:
320 x 200 interlaced w/32 colors from a palette of 4096
320 x 200 non-interlaced " " " " "
320 x 400 interlaced " " " " "
640 x 200 interlaced w/16 " " " "
640 x 200 non-interlaced w/16 " " " "
640 x 400 interlaced w/16 " " " "
The Amiga also has an exclusive 'Hold-and-Modify' mode which
allows all 4096 colors to appear on the screen in any of the
above color/resolution combinations. Screens in this mode are
breathtakingly beautiful, and exceed the capabilities of any PC,
including the IBM with the Professional Graphics Board.
The Amiga has real stereo output, and an excellent sound chip, with
sound sampling capabilities. The Apple][GS has a more advanced sound
chip, made by Ensonique, but they did some very silly things regarding
the memory that the chip can access. The ][GS also can't hold a
candle to the Amiga for screen resolution, animation (it can't even
page flip quickly), has no blitter chip, and is way overpriced.
The most direct competitor to the Amiga is the Atari 1040ST, which
has a megabyte of memory right out of the box, but once again, the
ST is way outclassed in the sound and animation areas, and has no
640 x 400 color mode available. It does have a lovely 640 x 400
non-interlaced mono display, which requires a special monitor, but
one must swap monitors to go from color to mono, and most software
is written for color or mono only, so to cover all bases, one needs
both monitors. The ST does have a built-in MIDI port, but it is
not a great MIDI port. Atari has been anouncing their own blitter
chip for over a year now, but it is questionable whether or not
it will speed up current software. Just this week I played with
an ST, and was amused at how program execution would grind to a
halt just by moving the mouse. The Amiga uses hardware sprites
and the blitter chip to move large areas of screen at lightning
speed.
In terms of memory, the 1040 ST is a steal at $999.00 for a 1 meg
computer, but so what? Today you can buy 2 megabytes of Amiga memory
for $500, whereas Atari seems to introduce a new, larger memory
computer every year.
In terms of software, the Mac is the clear winner for consistent,
high quality stuff....but it has had a three year head start. Now
that the Amiga IFF standard has been adopted by all software writers,
the Amiga can do anything the Mac can do, and tons of things it
can't do...
The ST and Amiga seem about equal in software volume, with the ST
leading in the areas of Word-processing and business-type stuff,
but the Amiga the clear winner in the graphics, animation and sound
areas. Entertainment software on the Amiga will absolutely run
rings around the ST, thankss to the larger number of colors, stereo
sound, and fast graphics. Multitasking helps too, since a game
can be fetching disk data, animating the screen, and playing a
four-voice score, all without ever missing a single step.
Anyway, I could go on forever, but your choice should be dictated
by what you want your computer to do. If costs are critical, it
is hard to beat the ST. If you need a ton of proven software, go
with the Mac. But the Amiga can do anything that the others can
do, and lots that they cant, all at avery reasonable price. Currently,
you can get a 512K Amiga with 2 drives, and RGB monitor for around
$1350. And AmigaDOS is set up to work with a 68010, or 68020
uProcessor. I think it is going to be the computer to beat for
quite some time.
Low cost hard drives are (gulp) shipping in January, look for a
20 meg Supra for $799. Memory boards are available from a dozen
or so vendors, and you can by a full-blown 68020/68881 for about
$1500.
The Side car is shipping in Europe and Canada, and should be available
any minute now in the US. It is a PC-in-a-box, for around $700.00
AmigaDOS treats the Sidecar as a peripheral, and MS-Dos runs in
it's own little window or screen.
Well, I am getting tired. Please ask the same question on the other
conferences to get the opposing viewpoint. But I will add that
everyone that has gotten an in-depth Amiga demo from me has bought
one after checking out the competition.
|
| I just spent most of Christmas day playing around with
my brother's Mac Plus. I gave him a copy of}i flight simulator
for Christmas. Al I can say is that now, I really don't like the
Mac. Like the ST, things slow down when you move the mouse. I
am used to the large screen on the Amiga. Making the switch to
the Mac felt like going from 70mm dolby stereo to black and white
TV. Everything is SO TINY! (Yes, you can't see the scan lines,
but you shouldn't have to use a magnifying glass to see a requestor.
The CPU was always getting bogged down by mouse requests. The thing
couldn't decide whether to refresh the screen or ask for input...very
disconcerting (my brother kept asking ME what was going on, why
was the thing hanging up, etc. Funny, I seldom have that happen
with the Amiga)
As slick as the Mac is, now I find it to be more 'toy like' than
ever. It spends so much time doing cute things, like the little
animated boxes you get when you open something. Now, more than
ever, I really prefer the Amiga. After all, what other computer,
in this price range, give you so much, and multi-tasking too?
I would not pooh-pooh multi-tasking (the way the competition does.)
Once you've worked with it, you will really wonder how you ever
got along without it.
Good luck with you choice.
Randy
|
| This seemed like a good place to list some of the shortcomings of
the Amiga, as well as it's strong points. I started thinking about
this after seeing the 'Juggler' ray-tracing animation.
The Amiga custom chips are presently restricted to using the lower
512K of memory. Yes, you can expand an Amiga to 9.5 megabytes today,
but the data for the graphics and sound chips must reside in the
lower 512K. I don't know why CBM did this.
It may not seem like much of a problem, since 512K is a pretty big
chunk of memory, but consider how the 'Juggler' demo works...a bunch
of HAM ray-tracings are store in memory, and some little pointer
somewhere jumps from frame to frame, causing pseudo-animation.
Actually, it is real animation. Real good animation. But if I
wanted to make a similar animation with, say 500 frames, I would
have to store the extra frames in external memory, then tramsfer
them to the lower 512K, (Chip memory) to display them. I don't
know how fast the Amiga can do this. Anyone know?
Anyway, one of the things that I perceive to be a plus on the Atari
ST is that there are no restrictions on where video data must reside.
There are some very nice ray-tracings for the ST that are pretty
impressive, athough limited to 16 colors. With a megabyte of memory,
a 1040 ST can store a truckload of frames without resorting to any
memory shuffling. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong about this.
Anyhow, I hope CBM can come up with an upgrade or motherboard fix
to correct this deficiency in the future.
Another real flaw on the Amiga is the standard monitor. It just
is not a very good monitor. For most work it is adequate, but the
real problem is in the 640 x 400 color interlaced mode. The 1080
monitor has such short phosphor persistance that the screen flickers
like crazy when in this mode. The problem can be minimized by careful
selection of low-contrast colors, but the only real fix is to buy
a long-persistance monitor, which is a pretty expensive fix. The
bearable part is that very few commercial programs force you use
that mode, but it is available if you decide to take advantage of
it. No other machine in the Amiga price range even offers the mode.
Some medium-priced monitors, like the Sony, do a pretty good job
in 640 x 400 interlaced, but it has always rubbed me that CBM would
sell a monitor that simply cannot handle one of the Amiga's most
powerful features. 640 x 400 with 16 colors is essential for CAD
work. I know, I know, a long-persistance monitor would have brought
the system price up to unacceptable levels to support a mode that
most people don't use, but I am one of the few who DO use it, and
I resented having to buy a special monitor.
Anyway, those are my gripes about the Amiga. I still love it dearly,
but it does have a few minor warts. The plusses far outweigh the
minuses in my opinion.
|
| Hello !
After reading these notes for a few weeks, you guys have convinced
me that what I want is an AMIGA. I don't want to add another note
on something that has been talked about a lot, so I think this is
a good opportunity to ask a few questions.
Here in Puerto Rico, I found one place that sells AMIGA's, but
reading these notes I'm sure I can get a better deal in the states.
So, I will be on a business trip to Tewksbury on the week of Jan
12. Unfortunately, I will be only two days and very busy, so I won't
have much time to shop around. My questions are:
1. What's the best place to buy an AMIGA ? I have seen mentioned
here The Memory Location, Bit Bucket, ComputerMart and Electronics
Boutique. Could you please specify the address ? Does it takes
American Express (if not, I will have to carry enough cash).
2. Does it sounds possible, even though difficult, to carry
and AMIGA, monitor and external drive as carry-on luggage on
plane. (I'm thinking in terms of volume and weight)
3. Is there any other music software you would recommend ? Assume
only an amplifier and speakers as additional equipment. I have
seen the bad reviews on MUSIC STUDIO. Any other you'd recommend?
Thanks for the information. Happy Holidays.
Miguel A. Alvarez
|