AmiWest 2011 was surely a very interesting Amiga show, especially for people who were able to attend to the show, with a lot to display.
Not unexpected, the AmigaOne X1000 was likely the most interesting system that was on display, and the announcement of the "First Contact Limited Edition" of the X1000 for Christmas/New Year Eve sale for consumers.
It will be a machine available at AmigaKit with 1GB DDR2 memory, 500GB SATA2 harddrive pre-installed with AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5, with a license to download AmigaOS 4.2 when available. A 1GB ATI Radeon HD4650 PCIe-card is also included, exclusive a Boing Ball keyboard and mouse. AmigaKit will have several options available for the buyers of the X1000. It has USB2 too.
Be aware that the price of the X1000 is now decided, at a price of 1699 Euro (that's about 14.000 NOK). To order the machine into Norway, the buyer will have to pay an additional 4-5000 NOK, meaning nearly 20.000 NOK (more correctly, around 1700+ Euro and the other 4-5000 in NOK). Quite a stiff overall price, but partly because of the PowerPC-technology tend to be a bit more pricy than x86, which has always been the case. Perhaps PowerPC will become cheaper?No doubt the X1000 is one hell of a hot Amiga-system, but also to be the most expensive one. So expensive that the question remains if many actually will be able to buy it? That is the big question. AmigaOne X1000 looks more like a development system than a general computer system for normal users, but then again it's a high-end system aimed more to professional users and developers with the knowledge to program and create applications and tools. Because the Amiga market i so small, the price is meant to help fund future Amiga projects and marketing.
Branding the SAM460ex the name AmigaOne 500 with its' own case is a very nice idea, and it's in true legacy of the old Amiga 500 back in 1987. ACube and A-EON did a nice teamwork on making this decision. AmigaOne 500 is running a 1.15Ghz AMCC 440 PPC CPU, has 2GB DDR2 memory, the option to have a 1GB ATI Radeon HD4650 PCI-e GPU-card, onboard audio, which is a Realteck 5.1 soundchip, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA2 with 500GB SATA2 harddrive, a SD card slot, USB2, and runs the latest AmigaOS 4.1 update. It's a system that seem to have everything that the Amiga 500 should have been back then. This mid-range Amiga system seems to be quite a nice attraction, at a price of 1067 Euro, nearly 700 Euro cheaper than the X1000! That's quite a difference! This is a system more for general use!
Personally, i'm stuck into quite a dilemma for Spring 2012, which will be the time i buy either two of the new Amiga systems. Will it be the AmigaOne X1000, or the AmigaOne 500? You will know in my new Amiga-based blog site that will be up and running in Spring 2012.
Written by:
Helge Kvalheim, Norway
