Amiga Returns With Lackluster Linux-Powered Mini PC

crookedvulture writes "Commodore has revealed the Amiga mini, a small-form-factor system that runs a custom Linux distro dubbed Commodore OS Vision. A trailer for the OS hardly inspires confidence, and the rest of the system doesn't help. While the Amiga mini features a high-end Intel desktop CPU and modern conveniences like Blu-ray, USB 3.0, and 802.11n Wi-Fi, it's stuck with one of the slowest graphics chips Nvidia makes. Some of the other specifications are head-scratchers, too. The mini comes with a whopping 16GB of RAM but only a terabyte of storage. You'll have to pay extra to get an SSD, which makes the $2500 asking price particularly onerous. The case, Blu-ray drive, and power supply are being made available separately, but at $345, they're hardly a bargain. Add this to the list of nostalgia-baiting remakes that don't live up to their inspiration." Update: It looks like Commodore has dropped the price after receiving a lot of negative feedback.

Comments

It goes without saying

[suso]

This is not Commodore, this is not the Amiga. This is a fucking bastard.

Re:It goes without saying

[dintech]

Also, a the end of the trailer it says "Commodore OS Vision coming 11.11.11".
I suppose they were planning to release it but then they took an arrow to the knee.

Re:It goes without saying

[crazyjj]

This pseudo-Commodore company (this is NOT the original Commodore company, which went out of business a long time ago) did the same thing with the Commodore 64 a while back, releasing a supposed clone of the classic machine that was basically just a custom case fitted around a PC running Ubuntu. The world was underwhelmed, to say the least.

Re:It goes without saying

[amiga3D]

I wish they'd just let the poor Amiga rest in peace. Far, far, far ahead of it's time and an early death due to morons in the HQ. Mehdi Ali and Irving Gould....the anti-Jobs. Together they wrote the manual on how to mismanage a billion dollar corporation into bankruptcy in just a few short years. Towards the end the small investors grouped together to hire a Private Investigator to find out where the clandestine stock-holder meeting was being held so they could show up to give them hell. If anyone had ever compared a pitiful late 80's early 90's pc to an Amiga they'd never have believed how things turned out.

Re:It goes without saying

[amiga3D]

The Amiga was defined by it's custom chipset. The way it handled graphics and sound in conjuction with the CPU coupled with a really sweet multi-tasking system that directly banged the hardware. This ultimately lost out to the much cheaper to build open architechture of the PC when Microsoft finally put out windows 95 that sorta did most of the things the Amiga had been doing for 10 years. It didn't do them nearly as well but it was, as MS usually is, good enough to get by. Coupled with dirt cheap hardware there was no way for the people who bought the Amiga rights to compete with it so there was never a chance for a new Amiga and there never will be. Due to the fanatical user community however some people have played on the desire for a new Amiga to bilk money from the faithful.

Re:It goes without saying

[tripleevenfall]

Know what else has a Core i7 processor? a Mac Mini.

They only have 4GB of memory by default, but at $999 you can get one with dual 7200rpm 500GB hard drives, Intel HD 3000 graphics, and a copy of Lion Server. There's no bluray, but it's also less than half the price of this Amiga DOA box.

When your product is a less attractive knockoff of an Apple design and somehow you manage to more than double an Apple price... I'm guessing your future does not include being filthy stinking rich.

Re:It goes without saying

[jandrese]

Amiga was also hobbled by the brain dead management at the time. Even if you have the best product in the world it is an uphill battle if your management is insane.

Re:It goes without saying

[Phreakiture]

I had three Amigas. I really enjoyed using those machines. I loved the fact that it was a true plug N play platform while my PC-using friends were still fucking around with interrupts, DMA channels, shared memory slots and jumpers. I loved the fact that they had not only video acceleration but also audio acceleration. I loved the fact that colour video and stereo audio were in all models. I still think HAM was a pretty cool compression algorithm, especially in that it was implemented in the hardware and could be decompressed as the monitor scanned, reducing the amount of video RAM (or, chip RAM as it was called in the Amiga paradigm) needed for a full-colour picture (remember, RAM was expensive in those days)

Ultimately, though, it is necessary to face a few facts. Commodore was run by a bunch of asshats. They effectively killed off this beloved platform. The platform is dead. Slapping the name on a LInux computer will never bring back what the Amiga was, and it will certainly not make the so-named computer what the Amiga could have and should have been. As much as I love Linux, I am not interested. It is like one of those modern radios that has a plastic enclosure designed to look like a classic cathedral radio. It isn't, it can't be, and it won't be what was lost to time. Enjoy the nostalgia, but eschew the exploitation.

Amiga is dead like Elvis. Mourn and move on.

Re:It goes without saying

[hairyfeet]

Its just someone who bought the brand trying to cash in, is anyone surprised?

I'll get hate for saying this but here goes: you will NEVER see anything like the Amiga ever again so give it up, okay? We are talking about a machine filled to the brim with custom designed chips with a custom built OS to run on top of it. To build something with THAT level of customization today would probably cost north of 100 million and would virtually guarantee that Windows would never run on it which would be the kiss of death due to the lack of apps. Now with Linux providing plenty of source code one could compile custom versions of many apps but again that would raise the price and today you either race to the bottom (MSFT) or you have enough brand loyalty and cool factor to allow one to charge high prices (Apple) and sadly Amiga would have neither today.

Lets face it guys what made Amiga so fucking cool was back then one could actually afford to breadboard an entirely new chip design and hire enough coders to build an entire OS just to squeeze every drop of power you could out of those chips. Hell theoretically you could do that today, can you imagine an OS that was built mostly in ASM to squeeze every last drop of power out of say an AMD 6 core and 7950 GPU? It would be so insanely fast and powerful it would make everything else look like bad jokes! But unlike when the Amiga came out PCs today are so damned overpowered that frankly it doesn't matter how much bloat and bling MSFT and Apple add to their OSes as we have cycles to spare everywhere. We have multicores hitting crazy speeds, assloads of RAM, and GPUs with hundreds of stream processors. That is the exact polar opposite to what we had when the Amiga was released, where machines were lucky if they had enough oomph to run a GUI at all and slow was pretty much taken for granted. All that customization made Amiga so damned much faster than everyone else it was just insane, it was a multitasking monster in the days of shitty single tasking DOS.

Look, I can understand why there are some geeks that secretly pray for the return of Amiga, I really do. I hung onto OS/2 for waaay longer than i should hoping and praying IBM would get their head out of their ass and market it right, but they didn't know what to do with it and totally killed it, same thing here. Commodore was a "cheap prices above all" kind of company and Amiga was this expensive badass ubercomputer that they really didn't have a damned clue how to sell and corporate stupidity killed it. But as much as we'd like to go and hit the reset button, as much as many of us wish it would have ended up Apple VS MSFT VS OS/2 VS Amiga, sadly things didn't work out that way. so let the old gal rest in peace, she had a good run, was ahead of her time, but that time is past. Companies like this just trying to ring a few more pennies out of the property are just a sad cash in, hoping there are enough geeks with money and a bad case of nostalgia they can make a quick buck.

Re:It goes without saying

[petermgreen]

Know what else has a Core i7 processor? a Mac Mini.

The chip in the Mac Mini is a mobile chip while the chip in this thing is an unlocked desktop chip. Don't let the fact that they share the i7 brand fool you into thinking they are the same thing.

Re:It goes without saying

[realityimpaired]

so... what does that make me? ;)

Re:It goes without saying

[ILongForDarkness]

I found the iMac 27" a better deal a year and a half ago when I was looking for an all in one. At the time the only thing I found really worth comparing with it was a HP model but it only had a 19" screen, and i3 and less graphics for I think it was ~200 less. So for 200 I got 9" more of a higher res display, an i7 quad, and a better graphics card. Made sense to me at the time. It all depends on what you want sometimes apple is a bit more but gives you a better screen and a little boost somewhere.

Re:It goes without saying

[Bert64]

All these half assed linux distros, especially those that used to ship with netbooks give linux a bad name...
They need to use a mainstream well known distro with a decent package repository available.

2500$ for that thing ???

[yvesdandoy]

Who said Macs were expensive again ?

Re:2500$ for that thing ???

[durrr]

Everyone, just because you find a worse offender doesn't mean the lesser one if redeemed.

This is stupid though, $2500 for generic mini-itx hardware with a retarded OS? Is this a joke or something?

Re:2500$ for that thing ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually nobody that has a clue calls mac's expensive.

The irony.

Re:2500$ for that thing ???

[jellomizer]

The problems with Macs isn't that they are expensive but you only have a small selection of models to choose from.
If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality. However the Mac may not be a value to you because a lot of the stuff that comes with the Mac you may not need and for the feature that you do want you may have to get extra stuff that you will pay for that you may not use...

So if you want a Laptop that is Light, and Fast. For PC's you have a bunch of options many without too many extras. For Apple you have only a couple of models if that to choose from.

It isn't that Apple is gouging customers (the Apple Tax) you are getting what you pay for. The crux of the matter is you may be getting more then you need or want.

Re:2500$ for that thing ???

[StikyPad]

If you take a Mac and Price spec for Spec (Every spec even if you don't think it is a big deal such as glowing keyboard with light sensor or weight and thinness) You will find that the Price of the Mac is the same as any other new Commercially built system out there of the same quality.

For the very low-end models, maybe, but when you look at the price of the higher models and upgrades -- literally comparing Apples to Apples -- it's readily apparent that their prices are way off, and egregiously so.

Let's compare two "base" iMacs, the only noted difference being the processor and HD:
21.5" Core i5 2.5GHz & 500GB -> 21.5" Core i5 2.7GHz & 1TB [$300 difference]
Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz $184 & Seagate Barracuda 500GB $84 (Total: $268) -> Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 & Segate 1 Barracuda TB $109 (Total: $314)
Actual Difference: $46 Apple's Markup: 552%
Sources: Intel's price list 500GB @ NewEgg 1TB @ NewEgg

Component upgrades for the second iMac:
2.7GHz Core i5 -> 2.8GHz Core i7 [Add $200.00]
Core i5-2500S 2.7GHz $205 -> Core i7-2600S $294 Actual Difference: $89 Apple's Markup: 125%
Source: Same as above

4GB -> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $200.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x2 = $50. Actual Difference: $25 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: The most expensive laptop 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM @ NewEgg

4GB -> 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB [Add $600.00]
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 $25 x4 = $100. Actual Difference: $75 Apple's Markup: 700%
Source: Same as above.

1TB -> 2TB 7200RPM Serial ATA Drive [Add $150.00]
Seagate Barracuda 1TB $109 -> Seagate 2TB $130 Actual Difference: $11 Apple's Markup: 1263%
Source: 1TB @ NewEgg 2TB @ NewEgg

And then there's the whole issue of using mobile components in a desktop. Why would they do that? Not to provide value -- mobile components are generally more expensive and lower performing then their desktop components -- but to cram them into a retarded form factor. Sorry, Apple's tax is alive and well, and it's insulting to an informed consumer. You can throw together a *better* system for well less than what Apple charges for its iMac and as a bonus, you don't have to buy a new your monitor when you upgrade your entire system. And for $28 and a little pre-planning, you can even throw Lion on it or run it in a VM. Yes, you have to learn or know how to do it, but as they say, ignorance can be expensive.

Oh wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

_Only_ a terabyte of storage?

Since when is that a little amount of storage?

Re:Oh wow.

[realityimpaired]

_Only_ a terabyte of storage?

Since when is that a little amount of storage?

In a $2500 computer? You can get a 2TB drive for about $15 more than the cost of a 1TB drive. The upgrade to 3TB still adds about $50 to the price, and 4TB even more, but in a system that's got a base price of $2500, it seems like a really bad decision made by beancounters to scrimp on something like the hard drive, especially when the *retail* difference in price to double the storage is less than 1% of the list price of the device.

Pricepoint fail

[talexb]

Guys, welcome to 2012. Now, about the price on your unit .. way, way too high.

Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.

I don't even care what it does -- it's too much money. So, good luck with that.

Re:Pricepoint fail

[NJRoadfan]

How about $250? I built a friend a Newegg shell shocker deal machine last week. Admittedly it isn't top of the line (Biostar MB, flimsy case, Pentium G850, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, DVD burner), but its pretty darned fast for what he uses it for. If it wasn't for the floods, it likely would have come with a 1TB HD instead. Desktop parts are pretty cheap right now.

Re:Pricepoint fail

[realityimpaired]

Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.

Case in point, I put together a Core i5 2500k (overclocked to 4.7GHz), 16GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 6870, 16GB of RAM, 1TB drive w/ 60GB SSD for cache (using the Z68 motherboard) for under $1000, less than a month ago. I did salvage the optical drive, monitor, keyboard, and mouse from an old system, but everything else was new. Even if you pick up a *really* nice 24" monitor, it's still under $1500.

For $2500, you can buy a *really* nice iMac, and get better technical support. (as much as I loathe Apple's business practices, their customer service is *really* good, and I'd recommend them to anybody that actually needs customer service/tech support).

NOT AMIGA OS

[JoeCommodore]

Note these aren't the same guys working on the Amiga OS

The Amiga mini they use their own re branded Linux Commodore OS. Amiga OS is a totally different animal.

Amiga?

[SirDice]

If it doesn't run AmigaOS it's not an Amiga. Heck, AmigaOS 4.1 was released not too long ago. http://www.amigaos.net/

The anti-slashvertisement!

[teslar]

Notice how that summary is about a product yet it is almost exclusively filled with negatives? Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the.... anti-slashvertisement.

I wonder what happens if the next story is a slashvertisment and the two touch?

Re:Resurrected Amiga

[robthebloke]

So... Amiga. Is it good or is it whack?

I can't see a port for my video toaster, or a place to insert the lightwave floppies, so it's definitely not as good as the A500 imho. It's almost as though they took the A600, and then removed the last remaining keys. It was hard enough using Deluxe Paint on a computer without the keypad, but it will be completely impossible with no keys at all. I can't see it catching on. I think the smart money will be on Atari this time around.

Commodore history of a name

[basotl]

Commodore International went bancrupt in 1994. It was bought by Escom which also went bankrupt in 1996. In September 1997, the Commodore brand name was acquired by Dutch computer maker Tulip Computers NV. In late 2004, Tulip sold the Commodore name to Yeahronimo Media Ventures. Yeahronimo Media Ventures soon renamed itself to Commodore International Corporation. On June 24, 2009, CIC renamed itself to Reunite Investments. CIC's founder, Ben van Wijhe, bought a Hong Kong-based company called Asiarim, and Asiarim purchased the Commodore brand from Reunite. Asiarim then changed its name to Commodore Holdings Corporation.

Ownership of the Amiga line passed through a few companies, from Escom of Germany in 1995, and then to U.S. PC clone maker Gateway in 1997, before an exclusive lifetime license was made to Amiga, Inc. in 2000. On March 15, 2004, Amiga, Inc. announced that on April 23, 2003 it had transferred its rights over Amiga OS to Itec, LLC, later acquired by KMOS, Inc. On March 16, 2005, KMOS, Inc. announced it's change of corporate name to Amiga, Inc.

Commodore USA, LLC was founded in April 2010. Commodore USA licensed the Commodore brand from Commodore Licensing BV on August 25, 2010 and the Amiga brand from Amiga, Inc. on August 31, 2010.

TL;DR This is not the Commodore International you knew and loved.

Sounds like the same ol' Commodore...

[meburke]

I first sold Commodore in Minneapolis back when they were making calculators in 1968. They came out with a 30-lb., programmable calculator that used magnetic strips to hold the programs. It only held 30 instructions, but it had recursion so it outperformed Friden and Marchant's competitive products. (One was 60 lbs and had two units connected by a thick cable, the other needed to be reprogrammed by performing the operation so it could be memorized before starting to produce any useful work.) I sold a bunch to Bell. With no printer (nixie-tube readout) an office of 30 people was practically silent. Bell had open rooms filled with clacking and clanking calulators in those days. Now we complain that the person next to us has a loud keyboard... Well, I made some money, but you should have heard the owner complain about the money he had tied up in Commodore. I didn't really know what he meant at the time.

Jump to 1978: I'm the first one selling Apple II and Commodore PET computers in Anchorage. I had to order 5 PET units at a time. My cost was $999.00 and the selling price was $1499.00. As long as I had a $5000 deposit with Commodore I had a $5000 "line of credit". But the manufacturing was lousy. I typically had shipments come in with two or more units DOA (and one where 4 out of my 5 units were DOA), which I had to RMA and wait for them to be returned. I needed stock? No problem: Commodore would gladly take another $5000 deposit and let me order 5 more units...

Jump to 1988: I'm selling computers to NASA in Houston for a store that also carries the Commodore Amiga. And guess what?..My manager is complaining about the same lousy manufacturing and policies that I did 10 years ago.

Jump to 1993: I helped set up a computer department for BizMart (now OfficeMax) and they are trying to deal with the same lousy stocking problems from Commodore. Right around Christmas time we sold a lot of Commodore Amiga and associated products. After Christmas the returns started coming in: It seems that we had all the marginal units dumped on us to make the Commodore numbers look good for some type of joint venture or purchase deal.

I believe in my heart that Commodore would have gone out of business if they didn't have the CMOS manufacturing to keep them afloat. I pity the vendors stuck dealing with Commodore, but it will probably be someone clueless like Best Buy anyway. The commodore products were somewhat innovative, but the company was not consumer or vendor friendly.