Commodore Tackles Asus Eee Keyboard with Invictus

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]g00ey[/nom]@mlopinto2k1 Do not despair there is still some innovation going on with the Amiga although one could wish there was more.I understand there is not much to expect from Commodore which has been bought and sold between companies several times. A lot of articles cover this in Ars Technica.But I still think the Aros project and Amiga OS4 are interesting though, and it is said that you can run MorphOS on a PPC based Mac Mini.And last but not least a new Amiga model is actually due this summer called AmigaOne X1000. You could read about it here (www.a-eon.com). I don't know how revolutionary it will be but I'm very curious about what this can accomplish since it is a very unique setup.[/citation]I've heard about OS4 and read up on the Amiga One and such. I have run the emulator (WinUAE and the AmiBox or whatever it was called that went along with WinUAE).. very cool stuff but still. Amiga "was" innovative. Such a shame. Back then I felt like I had a secret weapon. No one in a 5 mile radius had one. Of course, that doesn't say much but no one really knew about it. Microsoft and IBM had superior firepower in the information department. They had the money to advertise. They knew how to get people to use their stuff. Commodore was surely lacking in the this department regardless of how much more superior their hardware was. Oh yea.. wasn't Workbench one of the first windows based operating systems? Anyway, I'll check out that new machine. Thanks.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]g00ey[/nom]@TA152H: I can't really see how the Amiga was a failure really. I think it was very successful and way over its competitors in terms of performance when it came and were hot.When the Amiga 1000 came out with 4096 colors (in HAM mode) and 4 8-bit audio channels the Macintosh was black and white with a small 7" CRT screen.Sure the interlace mode was flickering but that is the best you can do if you want to get a higher video resolution on a simple NTSC/PAL/SECAM TV. There were scan doublers and flicker fixers that could get rid of the flickering on a capable monitor, and graphic cards such as Merlin and CyberGFX that were capable of showing 16.8 million colors at a time period where PCs had MSDOS with and Windows 3.11 with 16 colors. There were tons of addons and upgrades that could make an Amiga beat the crap out of any contemporary Mac or PC.But the Amiga as it were didn't survive plain and simple and it wasn't because the hardware was anywhere inferior to the hardware of its competitors just as little as Betamax and Video2000 were inferior to VHS.[/citation]

Well, actually, the reason VHS did beat Beta was because it was better at one thing - it could tape a whole movie on one tape. Beta also wore the tape down when you did forward fast and rewind since it never removed it from the head. So, there were characteristics of it that were inferior, and the first one was the most important.

Of course, Beta did eventually add Beta II mode, which allowed longer recording, and also the 750 and eventually 830 tapes, but by then the issue was decided.

When the Amiga came out, it was a bomb. First, Commodore BOUGHT the Amiga, they didn't invent it. Then they came out with a piece of crap that didn't work well, and had a lot of problems with the OS. It was a lot more expensive then the Atari ST520 line, and Mac in the 68K line, and both were less troublesome. Commodore did eventually solve the problems, slowly, but by then IBM was releasing the PS/2 line, and OS/2 was out shortly after.

That's the problem in the computer industry. Timing is important. If it takes too long to get it right, the industry just passes you buy. The PS/2 line was very advanced, and made the Amiga essentially obsolete, and OS/2 was light years ahead of anything Commodore (or Apple) had. They had to resign themselves to being niche players, and died ignominiously, and then were passed around like a prostitute at a poker game.

 

[g00ey]

TA152: You don't make any sense at all, but to give a simple answer to your question. The business who wins in the market is not the one with the best performing products but the one with the strongest business model. IBM's contemporary computer products were not better than the Amiga computers but IBM was a much stronger company than Commodore. IBM could meet its business obligations whereas Commodore eventually could not, which is why IBM survived and Commodore eventually went Chapter 11. It was said that Commodore made quite a few bad investment decisions from which they couldn't recover. Their line of PC computers as well as a portable computer they launched were a total failure which is said to have put them out of business. Read the articles on Ars Technica, they may give a better clue as to what have happened, it has been a while since I read them.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

One of the stranger things to hit the internet this week is news of an Asus Eee Keyboard clone manufactured by long-standing company Commodore.

It's not "long-standing," another company bought the rights to the Commodore name a couple of years ago. That's who's producing this. It was even covered here on Tom's.

 

[lamorpa]

Well it's definitely something or other, that will do something, and will be released (or not) at some point. That much we know.

 

[Guest]

Commodore went out of business in 1994. This is just some company that purchased the name (the latest in a series to do so). They've been announcing new keyboard computer products for 2 or 3 years now, mostly just photos, occasionally with specs. None have ever been for sale, and most likely don't even exist. But thanks for this misinformed useless article.

 

[coteau]

Ahhh.... the good old days of Commodore 64, Amiga 1000.
Nothing since has gotten me that jazzed up except maybe AMD Socket 939 or USB 2.0! WOOT!

I had a friend (yes it's amazing isn't it) that bought the CD32. It was nice but was bad timing. CD32 got leapfrogged not long after.

My dad's friend was an engineer for Commodore. He told us what is now well known. Not enough money went to R&D. The Commodore 64 ruled the market for quite some time. First on ease of use then on market momentum. Commodore didn't/couldn't advance for years until it bought Amiga. By then many of the C64 crowd had already moved on to other brands like Atari, Apple, IBM compatibles. If Commodore could have kept market share momentum from the C64 to the Amiga and also reinvested into R&D instead of running away with bags full of cash Commodore could still be alive.

Most enthusiasts around my area tended toward the fun machines of Commodore and Atari. The IBM compatible crowd came in a distant third for a long time until the avalance. Only now are locals buying Apple computers / getting on the Apple bandwagon after the success of the iPod, iPhone, and funny Apple commercials.

R.I.P. Commodore and Amiga

 

[Guest]

If it comes with Amiga or a commodore OS, I do hope they send a bunchload of those old games and programs with it too!
Mario Bros was like the newest game I ever seen on a commodore!

 

[js1882]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]OK, one simple question - why did Commodore die? If the Amiga was a success, how did this happen? It was a complete failure and killed the company.The IBM market had a lot more games than Amiga, and had a lot more games than any market at that time. It had much more advanced hardware with the PS/2 lines, and had advanced operating systems when OS/2 and Windows NT came out. That's why Amiga became extinct. By the time they got rid of the problems, it didn't really have any reason to exist outside of the niche market, which were still served OK by the big guys. You may have liked the Amiga, and others have as well, but it's clearly a failure on a grand scale. If it weren't, Commodore would not have died. Why would they go belly-up with a big success?[/citation]


Ok you're way off. Commodore didn't die because of the Amiga, it died because of incompetent management and corrupt executives that didn't care about the company.

The Amiga was light years ahead of it's competition in terms of the things you could do. It took until about 1995 for Microsoft to finally catch up with it. OS/2 was a joke and never caught on. Why would you even compare that to AmigaOS?