Quick AmigaONE Survey

[HammerD]

We have never been given official numbers by Eyetech (or bplan) for that matter, on how many machines are out there. Please take a quick moment to fill out this community survey. Hopefully we can get a ball-park figure on how many Amiga's are out there.

Quick AmigaOne Survey (http://www.ivey.ca/staff/develand/amiga.htm)

Results will be posted back here! Thanks!

[x56h34]

Good idea. :-)
I've submitted my signature.

[Paul]

Good luck!

According to the last three or four attempts at having such a poll over at aw.net, there have been approximately 36 AmigaOne's sold. :lol:

Paul

[x56h34]

@Paul:

It could be that many AOne owners don't frequent the mainstream Amiga message boards. :-?

...or is there really only 36 boards sold in total? ;-)

[HammerD]

I have well more than that so far - over 100 responses in 1 hour....and it's not even posted on AW.net yet. :)

Darren

[Magic-Merl]

Or maybe Eyetech would like to post some figures.

[ikir]

Useless. 2/3 the A1 owners i know don't browse too much forums or even at all. Why make this useless poll. You should multiple the result by 3, 4, 5, 10... you don't know.

PS: the last poll on AW.net hit muhc more than 36 votes as far i remember. About 300 or more.

I quite sure of some numbers discussed with soem members of the comunity. About 2000 total machines.

For example on www.os4depot.net every month the best downloaded files go about or over 800 downloads even when it is downloadable by more websites.

Eyetech should says these numbers...... but anyway the others are only speculations.

[drHirudo]

Yes, this poll with be little innaccurate, because:

1) Some A1 owners aren't browsing the web/forums/sites.

2) Some people have more than one AmigaOne machine.

3) Some "goodwilling" person may vote more than once.

4) Some folks have purchased their A1s but are waiting for it to arrive.

5) Some people have A1 but will buy second in the near future (me for example).

6) Some users are waiting for AOS4 final to be released and then make their purchase - this is unsure if it will be next month or the next year.

etc....

[TheMagicM]

I clicked "No and I dont plan to buy one".

[HammerD]

Hi, I'll try to answer some of your questions:

1) There is nothing I can do about that if they don't read it, they obviously won't be counted. However, we can use statistical methods to determine a confidence level based upon the results. Stuff like "accurate within 3.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20"...etc... I will have to dig up my stats notes from University :)

2) That could be the case, but most people don't have two identical AmigaONE's. So far, based on the 175 results, very few have more than one AmigaONE, and those that do are checking off that they have an XE and a Micro.

3)I am checking IP address and I will weed out entries from the same IP.

4) That could be the case, they could write that in the comment section. I would think that this would again be a very small number. The survey's aim is to gauge the size of the existing population.

5) I want today's population. But there is a question on planning to purchase one in the next 12 months, you could select that you own an XE and that you also plan to purchase one in the next 12 months. That would cover your case (you can select multiple boxes on the survey).

6) This option:

No, but I plan to buy one within 12 months or with the OS4 final release.

Covers that case.

[drHirudo]

What about the non english speaking A1 owners? Have you posted at Amiga-news.de in German for example, or at Iksnet in Italian, in swedish sites, finnish forums, norvegian portals etc..?

[HammerD]

No unfortunately my language skills are limited to English. I have submitted the link to Amiga-news.de and they normally do a translation of the original description. If you want to offer any translation I can add that.

Thanks

[Paul]

@ Ikir and x56h34

PS: the last poll on AW.net hit muhc more than 36 votes as far i remember. About 300 or more.

I just pulled a magic number (no Linux pun intended) out of the hat to make a sarcastic comment on how inaccurate and useless such a poll would be. If the most popular site for A1 owners doesn't even get that big of a reponse (whether 36 or 300), why should A.org??

But then, HammerD has already put this up over at ANN, too. That should drive the statistical accuracy through the roof. :-x

@ HammerD

I had a university statistics course once, too. It provided a good way to make wishful thinking about numbers look more official.

[x56h34]

It doesn't matter if this survey is not 100% accurate. At least it kind of gives you an idea of the approximate numbers. :-)

[HammerD]

Hey, as other users commented this is to get a ball-park figure. Statistics are statistics, polls are polls. But they do give you insight into what's out there. I'm looking at the results so far (over 250 and coming in very quickly) and most people have left comments. If you don't believe in statistics then I am not going to try and convince you.

The results so far don't look like they are off-base. In fact most people are also leaving comments, and I am weeding out duplicate entries from the same IP address --if I get any.

[cdfr]

I have translated the poll and submited it to Amigaimpact.org (http://www.amigaimpact.org) (The French equivalent of Amiga.org). It should be posted in the next 24 H.

[HammerD]

Excellent! Thanks alot!!

Update: over 400 responses in 5 hours...not bad...and they keep coming in!

[Seehund]

This needs to be on the front page for a while, so I took the liberty to submit it as news.

BTW, HammerD, do our e-mail addresses get published? I added some anti-spam protection to mine just in case, sorry if that messes things up.

[Acill]

I voted no and dont plan to buy one. I have a Pegasos.

[HammerD]

Seehund:

No they won't be published, but if you asked a question in the comments you should leave your E-mail address...if you want a response :)

Thanks!

[coldfish]

I'm pretty sure the -$50 earlybird voucher- counter clocked around 1300+ before it was taken down. So if all those people went on to buy A1's, there are atleast that many out there.

My own guess would be somewhere around <2000 A1's worldwide.

Not really a developer friendly number so far...

[drHirudo]

I'm pretty sure the -$50 earlybird voucher- counter clocked around 1300+ before it was taken down. So if all those people went on to buy A1's, there are atleast that many out there.
This is true mostly for the SE/XEs. I never heard about this voucher, until recently, but bought µA1.

[DethKnight]

Winston Churchill once said: "There are lies, damn lies and statistics."

http://blogs.msdn.com/EricLippert/archive/2004/02/05/68174.aspx

[Cymric]

HammerD wrote:
1) There is nothing I can do about that if they don't read it, they obviously won't be counted. However, we can use statistical methods to determine a confidence level based upon the results. Stuff like "accurate within 3.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20"...etc... I will have to dig up my stats notes from University :)
No, you cannot. I am not saying I disagree with your poll---it is in fact a good idea---but information about confidence levels implies that you have an idea about the entire population of A1 owners. And that is precisely the problem: you don't, and you can't. A normal survey starts with a known amount of inquiry forms, telephone calls, or whatever. You need to infer that information from your poll, and that is akin to having your cake and eating it too.

Statistics is a very powerful tool, but it cannot produce reliable numbers from thin air.

[cdfr]

Well there is one thing this poll can answer "How many Amigaone (current and future) owners did notice the survey and answered it ?" (if there are not too many people who answer to the poll more than once with different IPs).

If someone makes a product for the A1 and put it on news site in a similar way there are some chances that the information will reach a similar amount of A1 owners (ok some may not bother to answer the poll but in the same way some may not bother to click on a link to a certain product and certainly much less will commit to the buy).

Of couse there are some things that definitely drive the results such as where is the poll posted, how is it formulated (here directed to people having some interest in the A1).

Darren will certainly have the opportunity to make other polls so we can see if there is a trend.
It does not have to be considered as hard facts anyway.

Statistics is a very powerful tool

It should also be noted, that you can prove *anything you want to prove* with statistics.

-edit

Doh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that."
- Homer J. Simpson. :-D

[Cymric]

mdma wrote:
Statistics is a very powerful tool
It should also be noted, that you can prove *anything you want to prove* with statistics.
Wrong. You cannot prove anything you want with statistics. The problem lies with the fact that people are intimidated by numbers and don't ask the infamous question How do they know that? when faced with one of them. Then all of a sudden a lot of numbers come crashing down, victim of the shoddy or shady mind that created them in the first place.

[coldfish]

Yeah who cares about the A1, lets talk about the viability of statistics in forming an opinion.

:-)

This thread does prove something...

[Cymric]

I don't care about the A1, but I do care about people trying to obtain meaningful information from a poll which I understand the need of. Otherwise it is just another succesful attempt at producing meaningless numbers :-).