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Amiga Update (1995-06-01)
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// Amiga Update - News and Rumors //
\X/ (A Very Occasional Newsletter) \X/
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950601
ESCOM HOLDS PRESS CONFERENCE TO ANNOUNCE AMIGA PLANS
Received news this morning of an announcement made by Escom yesterday (May
30). It is in part at variance with what we'd passed on to you earlier, but
overall the information is consistent. The news was contained in a copyrighted
article from "Amiga Link", an online magazine. Newsletters are specifically
prohibited from copying the article, so let me paraphrase.
The announcement was made at a press conference in Frankfurt, Germany, with
about 70 reporters in attendance. ESCOM plans to have Amigas available before
Christmas, probably by September or October. This contradicts earlier reports
of product available within 60 days of acquisition, but is still not bad.
Missing a second Christmas season though would probably have been fatal.
The first run is planned to create 15,000 '040 based A4000s; 10,000 '060 based
A4000s using the Cyberstorm 060 accelrator; between 120,000 and 130,000 A1200s;
and an unspecified number of CD-32s. The A1200s will be upgraded to '030EC
processors.
Redesigns are planned for the cases on the A4000s and the CD-32s. The A4000
case was shown at the press conference. The Cd-32 redesign is intended to
help it compete with games consoles.
Apparently there will be an Amiga T-shirt created also, as part of the
effort to show support for the computer.
All the new Amigas sold will be shipped with the multi-media authoring
system Scala.
Future plans call for porting Amiga OS to RISC, but no mention was made
of which chip. This conflics with reports we'd heard recently that the
Power PC had been selected.
The plan as announced did not deal with marketing, causing some concern among
long time Commodore watchers. We'll have to see what happens, I guess. There
were also no non-European distributors announced. The Amiga part of the
operation is small, with only 50 employees. Break even is expected by the
end of the year, which is good news.
Other tidbits were interesting. Apparently ESCOM is looking for a European
factory to supplement their Chinese one. They also plan to sell Pentium PCs
with the Commodore name on them.
All this information is very interesting, but only time will tell how much
of the plan becomes reality. We'll keep you posted as we get new information.
Brad
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|| Brad Webb - available at:
// Commodore has fallen || webb@malamute.med.ge.com
\X/ and it can't get up || GEnie -- B.Webb
(but ESCOM can - ?) || Portal -- XJumpdisk
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