WHAT JAMES PRESTON REALLY THINKS ABOUT AMIGAS

Well, seeing as I designed all the graphics and sound for this website, and help to update it regularly, I thought that I might as well (and deserve) my own little spot here on the site. And so, here it is displaying the first tpoic that I will discuss and debate with you all - 'What I really think about amigas'.

Well, I suppose they, as a name are listed among the greats of the first home computer entertainment system, with a little bit of graphics and music on the side, but look at them now. Every so often I hear numbers thrown at me by my friend (who seems to be in love with them) that tell me that the new amiga that's just been released is better than the last one.

It just seems to me that they don't advance. For instance. As you probably know, if you've explored this website long enough is that my friend owns a Commodore Amiga 500+, and a Commodore Amiga 1200. Then take a look at the specification. Well, to cut a short story even shorter, nothing is different except the CPU speed, which seems to be working twice as fast on the machine with a bigger number than the previous machine. Oh, and it's 32 bit too - which makes all the difference to games programmed in 16bit.

Now lets compare Amiga's latest 'advancements' with the ever-growing PC industry. Right. First, lets compare raw CPU speed. My friend's A1200 32bit CPU is working at about 14Mhz+. My PC is working at around 266Mhz. Okay. Now lets pretend that I could run an amiga game on my PC (which I probably can with an emulator or something). Let's take the old classic 'WizKid'. Now that was a good game. Never completed it though, because I couldn't be bothered waiting for it to load up on the old amiga. How long did it take? About five, ten minutes? I wonder how long something that was stored on three 720k floppy disks like WizKid was would take to load up on a 266Mhz PC with 98Mb RAM (the simple specification of my machine). Hmmm, see my point?

I think that the rest pretty much defines itself. The RAM of the average amiga is about 2 to 4Mb. The RAM of an average PC is 32 to 128Mb. Soundcard? Well, mine is an AWE64, 16 bit full duplex soundcard, providing 16 channels. What is the good old amigas? 8bit 'Paula' chip (or is it Pauline? You know, the old one who wears the cardigans on Eastenders) providing...wait for it...4 INDEPENDANT SOUND CHANNELS!! Ooooo! Wow! I want one of them!

I can't be bothered to define the rest, you can work it all out for yourself just by looking at the bare figures. One thing for amigas though, is that they are small. But that's boring so I give them all a one out of ten, and I think that they should all be put back in their boxes and left up in the attic somewhere.

See you all next month!

- James.