| [Events] The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland | Link |
| Posted on 23-Sep-2004 06:42 GMT by saku | 174 comments (82k)
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Add comment | | Why guess, listen to rumours,
compare months old public releases and continue speculating online? Why not
participate in a friendly duel and come see the state of the art for
yourself! Finnish Amiga Users Group is pleased to demonstrate the best of
the both worlds at its annual meeting this coming Saturday: AmigaOne
running a new AmigaOS 4.0 beta and Pegasos II running MorphOS 1.5 beta. The time
and place to be: 14 o'clock, Saturday 25.09.2004, Opetusravintola Eetvartin
Kellarikabinetti, Sumeliuksenkatu 16, Tampere, Finland.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland
TAMPERE, FINLAND - September 23st, 2004 - Why guess, listen to rumours,
compare months old public releases and continue speculating online? Why not
participate in a friendly duel and come see the state of the art for
yourself! Finnish Amiga Users Group is pleased to demonstrate the best of
the both worlds at its annual meeting this coming Saturday: AmigaOne
running a new AmigaOS 4.0 beta and Pegasos II running MorphOS 1.5 beta.
Encouraged by the recent technological advances within the extended Amiga
community, the Finnish Amiga Users Group is once again excited to showcase
the latest progress. Colour blind since its inception, the Finnish Amiga
Users Group welcomes everyone - and attendance is free as usual. The time
and place to be: 14 o'clock, Saturday 25.09.2004, Opetusravintola Eetvartin
Kellarikabinetti, Sumeliuksenkatu 16, Tampere, Finland.
Also attending is Finnish Amiga retailer Gentle Eye Ky. Welcome!
About Finnish Amiga Users Group
Finnish Amiga Users Group (officially Suomen Amiga-käyttäjät ry.) is a
registered, non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Finnish Amiga
computer users by preserving and advancing the Amiga hobby and knowledge
of the Amiga computing platform in Finland. The group aims to reach its
goals through volunteer efforts such as organizing events and publishing
an e-zine called Saku. For more information, see http://saku.amigafin.org.
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 52 of 174 | Posted by Kjetil (80.212.196.116) on 25-Sep-2004 09:24:06 | In Reply to Comment 51 (Don Cox):
Some care about price,
some do not care about price if it stand up to there requirements,
about comparing Amiga prices whit PC stop that,
start comparing them whit Macs, if you look at the
Mac prices they are really not that cheap,
I'm not concerned about the number of AmigaOS user at the moment, I think once the
product offer more connectivity and backwards compatibility, then the computer becomes
more useful for daily use ex: connecting memory sticks and photo/video/web-cams, TV-cards and other
multi-media devices in your home, the Amiga comes more useful for more folks.
It's more about what AmigaOS can offer compared whit other alternatives,
not about the amount it offer, you really only need one good paint program, one good music program, one good web browser, you don't need 100 different paint programs, quantity is not equal to quality,
I'm not disagreeing whit on the price tag, I think the CPU modules costs are bit hi, it drives the costs up,
question how needs COM1,COM2,PAR ports this days? do we realy need the onbaord disk-drive controller?
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 54 of 174 | Posted by Anonymous (213.226.84.50) on 25-Sep-2004 10:39:40 | In Reply to Comment 52 (Kjetil):
"about comparing Amiga prices whit PC stop that,
start comparing them whit Macs, if you look at the
Mac prices they are really not that cheap,"
OK, here we go:
Complete iMac 1.6GHz G5 system with the following specifications:
17-inch widescreen LCD
1.6GHz PowerPC G5
512K L2 cache
533MHz frontside bus
256MB DDR400 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
80GB Serial ATA hard drive
Slot-load Combo Drive
It has: Two FireWire 400 ports; three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 1.1 ports (on keyboard); VGA output; S-video and composite video output (with adapters)
Included software:
Mac OS X version 10.3 “Panther”, the world's most advanced operating system, iLife (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand), AppleWorks, Quicken 2004 for Mac, World Book 2004 Edition, Nanosaur 2, Marble Blast Gold, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive, Apple Hardware Test and more
Price? $1,299
OK, over to the A1 then (at software hut):
AmigaOne G4-XE motherboard with G4 processor
256MB [expensive & hard to find] RAM
Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM drive
52X24X52 CDRW
ATI Radeon 7000 64MB and TV Out graphics card
Sound Blaster Live audio card
2 USB 1.1 Ports
10/100 Ethernet Built In
HD Floppy drive
3-Button Mouse and Keyboard
Included software: None!
Price? $1,499
Add some $100 or so for the OS (which include some demos of some year 1990 level software etc in a contrib drawer)
The price for the A1+OS4 ends up at $300 more than the G5 Mac, and that is for a Articia based motherboard with dubious quality, No office suite, No modern Internet software, and NO 17" LCD WIDESCREEN! You were saying?
Of course the Pegasos looks kind of poor in comparison too, but at least that motherboard is a lot better than the A1 in most aspects and a lot cheaper! Also, Linux works FINE on the Pegasos!
"I'm not concerned about the number of AmigaOS user at the moment, I think once the
product offer more connectivity and backwards compatibility, then the computer becomes
more useful for daily use ex: connecting memory sticks and photo/video/web-cams, TV-cards and other
multi-media devices in your home, the Amiga comes more useful for more folks."
Sure, drivers are a must have, but those alone won't make the computer useful. Applications will, like those available for (or even included with) the Mac you wanted to compare the A1 with. There are not many applications for the OS4 that works good today, not even the old ones because of OS4's poor Amiga compatibility and emulation capabilities, and I don't see a lot of new ones coming either ...
"It's more about what AmigaOS can offer compared whit other alternatives,"
Agree. So exactly what is that?
"you really only need one good paint program"
Agree, PHOTOSHOP is all I need, and I really need it! It's available for the Mac you wanted to compare to.
"one good music program"
Disagree! The more of those the marrier! :-)
"one good web browser"
Yes, a pity there is not a single one for the OS4 ...
Look, the A1 and OS4 is only interesting to a few hundred Amiga geeks. They have already bought what they want. Do you think we have a nutricious market here? Do we see a lot of commercial office suits, web browsers, music programs etc rolling in? Do we see a lot of commercial "software houses" lined up to release their software for this "new" (hmm) "powerful" (ahem) "fair priced" (cough!) platform?
Nah, the A1/OS4 is a hobby for some very rich (and/or stupid) people who has a need to use things with boing balls on, just for the sake of it and not because of the hardware/application specifications, that's all there is to it, and I see no chance of how it possibly coud take off to become a real platform!
Or can anyone please enlighten me?
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 62 of 174 | Posted by Dan (213.204.135.91) on 25-Sep-2004 13:30:18 | In Reply to Comment 58 (Kjetil):
It´s cheaper to have them onboard and probably less driver-issues.
If the interface is there, why don´t use it? headers and dsubs don´t cost much.
I can only see one reason to not have ser and par and that is space. which isn´t a issue yet.
Heck even the Gumstick <a href="http://www.gumstix.com/"http://www.gumstix.com/>
has serial not to mention BasicStamp, A500, and most 8-bits can be fitted with one. It´s usefull for both hobbyprojects and industrial use.
Apple IMac might look cool but BeBox was cool. Geek-port that was a good idea.
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 76 of 174 | Posted by Don Cox (Registered user) on 25-Sep-2004 16:59:16 | In Reply to Comment 73 (Kolbjørn Barmen):
"I dont get this.. what do you have against progress?"
Nothing except the expense - I've spent far too much on computers over the past 25 years. There are other priorities.
If the new ports are additional, they are very welcome. If they mean the new motherboard doesn't work with any of the existing gear, that is stupid. Adaptors are a fudge - and they cost money.
There is no point in novelty for the sake of it, or just so the manufacturers can get you to buy a newer and tackier version of something you already have.
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 78 of 174 | Posted by hooligan/dcs (Registered user) on 25-Sep-2004 17:15:20 | A few Saku2005 pics
some explanations:
1 - somebody checking Colorwheel in Ambient prefs. MPlayer playing a movie and Zone Xplorer rending mandelbrtos.
2 - Piru manually coding a crash because we couldn't crash MOS otherwise
3 - MOS's "Grimreaper" clone in action.
4-5 crowded room. There were <>50 of us, I assume
6-7 Some Wipeout was in order to fullfill gaming desires
8-9 Some game. Looked fun.
10-11 Quake 2 to show how fekkin' lame gamers we are in real life
12 - Nice towercase!
13-14 Windows like TaskManager, to kill, freeze or break tasks. It also has cpu monitor
15 - Some 3d accelerated ANR plugin
16 - ANR, I think
17-19 OS4b in action
20 - Prefs window, screenblanker selection with preview
21-22 More colorwheel watching .. it works in realtime changing all the settings in global MUI windows.
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 81 of 174 | Posted by koan (212.126.156.21) on 25-Sep-2004 17:33:20 | In Reply to Comment 51 (Don Cox):
The main reason has to be the small numbers being sold - which does give a
vicious circle.
I don't disagree, the number of A1s that could possibly be sold is very low.
However, my understanding is that Pegasos is much cheaper (*), how is this so
when Genesi has perceivably the same size or smaller userbase ?
* I wouldn't be against seeing some comparison tables and figures, for example,
cost of ownership could be higher - if I understand correctly if you didn't
pay to upgrade to a Pegasos 2 then you could end up with less/un supported
hardware.
Although this might seem like a flame war inducing question, I think it is
a question that many people are thinking about as they look to choose which
platform to go with.
koan
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 91 of 174 | Posted by Kolbjørn Barmen (158.38.161.72) on 25-Sep-2004 18:43:21 | In Reply to Comment 77 (Don Cox):
"What you don't seem to realise is that built in parallel and serial (and Amiga-type joystick) ports are _simple_. They do not need elaborate software drivers. They always work."
They certainly do not "always work", neither of them. The are lots of serial ports that are locked to 8n1, and there are lots of parallel ports that do no support all the needed modes to be usable with all hardware. And there are lots of crappy drivers for them, in all OSes.
And besides that, they run at "old" voltage... good riddance!
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 92 of 174 | Posted by Janne (80.186.194.188) on 25-Sep-2004 18:55:41 | Some other tidbits from the show:
- MOS 1.5 had native TCP/IP, but its prefs were unfinished and due to unavailability/limited availability of network at the event place, it was not demonstrated.
- MOS 1.5 has Radeon 3D, but it was not shown due to beta code refusing to run on other than developer machines (MAC checking precaution, MOS was shown on a user-group member machine).
- AmigaOS 4.0 beta was a beta of the pre-release upgrade. It didn't have JIT or 3D. It did have DMA enabled IDE drivers.
Neither of the systems showed any signs of significant crashes or any problems like that. In fact, they look very much alike side by side. MOS did have superior applications compatibility though, much more improved from 1.4: WOS, PUP, 68k JIT, Warp3D, 3D accelerated SDL etc. all running on the machine. Voodoo 3D was said to four times faster than in 1.4. Also audio.device compatibility was there. OS4 was lesser in this regard, no JIT, 3D etc. But software SDL was shown. OS4 on the other hand had some nice touches such a lot better Grim Reaper and lots of nice prefs and the versatile AmiBench. Though MOS 1.5 also had great prefs and lots of new goodies (like 3D accelerated blankers, hotkeys for e.g. resizing windows from borders, new mouse pointer prefs, ability to change boot image etc. small touches). MPlayer movie player in MOS was said to be Altivec enabled.
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 93 of 174 | Posted by Kjetil (80.212.196.116) on 25-Sep-2004 18:59:16 | In Reply to Comment 91 (Kolbjørn Barmen):
"What you don't seem to realize is that built in parallel and serial (and Amiga-type joystick) ports are _simple_. They do not need elaborate software drivers. They always work."
back to the hardware hacking arguments again, and I started to think we where moving away from that type medaling whit the hardware, the only reason I can think of to keep this parts are for geek stuff, home made electronic geek gadgets, and maybe connect a A500 over serial form time to time to convert ADF's or some thing like that.
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The Best of Both Worlds: New OS4 beta and MOS 1.5 beta in Finland : Comment 99 of 174 | Posted by Joe (62.252.192.12) on 25-Sep-2004 19:30:09 | In Reply to Comment 49 (Darth_X):
Still no reason to charge so much for a crappy board. Hyperion & Eyetech have totally shot themselves in the foot in a big way and have lost quite customers in doing so.
Lets be serious though. The AmigaOne motherboard is ONLY aimed at pure hardcore Amiga users who will pay extortionate prices for glorified junk, even if it was 2000/3000 bucks per board,those people would still purchase them. Sad really as i wanted Eyetech and Hyperion to do well but they have totally disapointed me with their idiocy.
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