Amiga Update (1995-06-01)

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Amiga update

 · 11 months ago

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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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