• BenHermans.mpg (356 MB)
• RobotFights.mpg (240 MB)
• ShowFloor.mpg (125 MB)

There was to ascertain that the Amiga-demos do not need to hide in any way for the superior PC-demos. At least they seemed more dynamic and more interesting. The most impressive was the 64k-demo "Planet Potion" of group "potion", this one was confirmed inside the hall with huge applause.

Furthermore there were beside the PC-demos some C64- and (sadly) any very few some Atari-demos. Shown were as well some demos for the Gameboy and for the TI83 calculator, which was very impressive.

Dale had injured a leg muscle in a skiing adventure, and he sat and took it easy while the others did most of the talking. Andy and Dave spoke about the early years, and about the Commodore bankruptcy. They spoke about their common work at PIOS on the Metabox set-top box. I can't recall who, but one of the three spoke about the 3DO system as the reinvention of Amiga OS, and another about the AmiJoe PPC-accelerator card. When asked about Amiga Inc.'s DE product, Dave said that it was "a good idea" and that someone named Gary had sent him two of the latest DE programs, but then accidentally let slip that the programs crashed on his Zaurus.

Overall the men seemed happy talking about their time at Amiga, and a bit wistful. Andy and Dave agreed that the single biggest mistake was wasted time and a failure to seize the moment when technological advances had been within the company's reach.

Upstairs in the large exhibit hall, a vendor with a mild speaking impediment ushered people over to try his Arcade in a Box. It is a sturdy joystick, button and trackball cabinet, which interfaces with MAME to play hundreds of arcade games with the feel of the real thing.

The people who produce the X1200 (which is an emulator-running PC in a compact A1200ish case) were there demonstrating that unusual product, which is rather spiffy in appearance. The X1200 is a pretty good idea. It runs Amithlon, which seemed to be selling very well at the show. Amithlon was getting positive comments all around. Amiga Inc.'s DE was a non-issue. Nobody is into that, from what I saw. There was a lot of anti-Microsoft sentiment. People resent having to use products by that company, because the Windows monopoly is such a fact of life and the consumer does not have much of a choice.

An example of the vendors present at the show was Compuquick who were very knowledgeable and had a good variety of stuff including A1200s and the oldish Phase5 PPC accelerators which can run MorphOS.

MorphOS felt a bit like a taboo subject. The MorphOS/4.0 question is the most politicized issue ever for followers of this platform. Some of the vendors were taking preorders for AmigaOne/4.0. Ben Hermans from Hyperion was reached on cellphone and was interviewed for at least 15 or 20 minutes. Ben must be given credit for putting himself out there and being a salesman.

I liked the fact that this convention doubled as an "alternative computers" convention, however this good idea has not been realized. There wasn't much representation from alternative computing systems. No Linux people, and I don't think anyone from QNX appeared either. And of course it would have great to see a MorphOS stand.

Some interesting snippets of information, posted by SlimJim:

• Screenshots of Amiga OS 4.0 will be published in the first part of April.

• Magic Menu and Birdie (among others) will be seamlessly integrated into the OS 4.0 interface.

• The new OS 4.0 GUI will look quite different (i.e it will not just look like a fast OS 3.9).

• Opus Magellan 2 has been licensed for OS 4.0 (details unknown).

• For the moment, the new printer system is not due to arrive until Boingbag/OS 4.1.

• The _latest_ MUI source code will be used (there was a question about this)

• IBrowse2.3 will be quite some beast. It will be enhanced for OS4.0. Not just some Aminet update. It will still miss some features of Netscape/IE though. There is not time to fix all to OS4.0. Flash is planned to be implemented. IB will be _much_ more stable than it is now.

• The guy that did the Warp-datatypes seems to be doing the new PPC-datatypes.

• The datatype system as a whole is to get a complete overhaul later. There is not enough time to do that to initial release.

• An office suit (Open office if I remember correctly) is being worked on. This is a 'high priority' for inclusion. (although it was not clear to me if it would be shipped initially)

• The development of software -independent of company size- is difficult to predict. But Mr. Hermans seems quite confident of an end-user release in May.