Amigaphile Survey Results (part 1)
AMIGAphile Volume 1 Number 1 (JUNE 1992)
There were a total of 90 surveys returned out of the 125 or so that I sent out. I never really expected more than half of them would be returned. I was pleasantly surprised. I have found that talleying these surveys is hard work and the amount of information available from them is too vast to put everything in this single issue. I will share the general feeling of the surveys and some of the more interesting results.
What model of Amiga do you own?
The low end Amiga 500s out numbered all other models. This is probably due to their affordability but the 3000 seems to be gaining a large following. Predictably, the 1000 has declined and many of the Amiga 1000 owners also own another Amiga. It would appear that Commodore has found a good basis for their high end systems in the 3000. I can't say how many 3000 owners moved up from other Amiga systems but I would guess that the majority of them owned another Amiga before taking advantage of Commodore's trade-up offer. The trade-up offer is one thing that I think Commodore did right. It enabled many people to move up and expand their system without starting from scratch and I'm sure this helped push sales of the 3000 from the start. We'll have to wait and see what the A600 does for the low end of the Amiga line.
500 38 **************************************
500+ 1 *
1000 14 **************
1500 1 *
2000 10 **********
2000HD 10 **********
2500 5 *****
3000 24 ************************
3000UX 1 *
TOTAL 104What model monitor do you own?
Most people own a Commodore monitor. This only seems right since I image most computers were purchased as a bundle including the monitor. Of course, some of the A500s come with no monitor but the ability to hook it to your television. NEC monitors, mostly the 4D, were the most popular non-Commodore monitor while Phillips, represented in the other category, was popular with the Europeans.
Commodore 68 **********************************
Magnavox 5 ***
Mitsubishi 4 **
NEC 7 ****
Panasonic 1 *
Seiko 2 *
Sony 5 ***
Other (mostly Phillips) 10 *****What version Workbench are you using?
The numbers speak for themselves. Workbench 2.04 edged out version 1.3 and both of them left version 1.2 in the dust. This only confirms the numbers of people upgrading to the new release. I guess I fall into the minority of 1.3 users and had better start seriously thinking about that upgrade. If 2.04 is this good, makes me wonder what sort of goosies can be expected from 2.1. We'll just have to wait until Commodore releases it.
WB1.2 4 **
WB1.3 40 ********************
WB2.x 50 *************************
Both 6 ***The both category covers those who have added a switch so that they may select which version they want to use.
How much memory?
When the memory from all 103 computers is added together the total is 424.5 megabytes of memory. Therefore, on the average, each system has about 4 megabytes of memory. I was shocked by these figures because I know that many of the A500 systems have only 1 meg of RAM. I can only imagine that the number of A3000 systems with 8 megs or better helped to raise the average tremendously. Among A500 owners, one megabyte of memory seems to be the norm while A3000 owners like to put a little bit more under the hood.
What type of memory expansion?
Looking back, this was not a very good question. Many people have expansion memory on their hard drives and the A3000 has room on the motherboard. This accounts for the fact that only 80 people have memory expansion of some type or other. Most every A500 with 1 meg used the A501 512K expansion from Commodore. This puts Commodore in the lead with 29. The other category got 22 replies putting it second. I can only figure that all A1000 expansion and the non-Commodore brand 512K A500 expansions all fell into this category. GVP and Supra followed with 12 and 11 respectively. Most of these were hard drive controllers also. Many Supra expansions went with A500s. ICD had 4 while IVS had 2 replies. I find it hard to draw any conclusions from this data because of many lack of forethought. Afterall, I have expansion memory on my SupraRAM, GVP series II controller and my '030 card. How does that fit into the survey?
What brand and size hard drive?
68 out of 90 people own hard drives (76%). These 68 people own 98 hard drives amongst them. That's 1.44 drives per owner for a total of 9894 megabytes of storage with an average of 100 megabytes per drive.
Maxtor 8 ****
Segate 8 ****
Quantum 67 **********************************
Connor 3 **
Other 12 ******This break down is accounted for by the fact that A3000s are shipped with Quantum drives therefore it should be expected that Quantum would be the leader. Quantum seemed to always be the choice for at least one drive when two or more were in a single system. The other category is made up of removable media drives, optical drives, and non-name brand hard drives.
