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[Kees]

As most of you people know, Amiga.org was at the Benelux show with a booth and the launch of our new magazine. The show was being held in downtown Rotterdam next to the central train station at Engels. It was a two days during show with 15 exhibitors and +/- 175 visitors. The visitors number was low, very low. During the last Benelux show in 2001 almost 600 people attended Rotterdam, therefor the organization was expecting 500 - 1000 people to show up due to the fact that their where more exhibitors and more new stuff was being showed.

Although the low visitors numbers, I had a lot of fun at the show and was able to meet people in real life for a change. So what happened during the show? ... who was there and what was being showed.

First of all .. Hyperion was showing AmigaOS4 running on the AmigaOne. They brought two AmigaOnes and both where running OS4 nicely. Since i didn't visit the Pianeta fair i can't say for myself that OS4 was running faster. But reading about the reports of the show in Italy and i can only say that i think OS4 runs a lot faster now. On of the AmigaOnes they brought was running Quake pretty fast. According to the Friedens OS4 gained +/- 40% speed compared to the presentation in Italy. OS4 was also booting very fast ! It was nice to meet the Friedens and Ben Hermans. I also noticed that Belgian people are good beer drinkers. ;-)

Secondly .. the competition. Genesi brought a set of sexy machines to the show all running Morphos and superbundle programs. Dennis Lohr was there to show Digibooster Pro wich seems a very cool application and they also showed Papyrus Office package. Next to this they also showed Wipe-Out and burnIT 3. The Genesi people where all very nice and they had the biggest booth of all exhibitors.

Epic was there and the showed their new title 'Northland' for the Pegasos. Northland is a strategy
game that i'd love to play online. At the Epic booth you could pre-order Northland for a special
price. Epic also brought other titles wich they sold during the show.

Oliver Hannaford-Day was showing a prototype of the Coldfire card. The card had a 220 mhz cpu and usb 1.1 The first version of the Coldfire will be for the Amiga4000 and will probably be released next year.

The Tyragroup was showing their new case (wich is something i will buy) with a flat screen. The case can be used for mircoATX boards. They where showing WindowsXP at their own booth and one of the cases was at the Genesi booth running Morphos.

GSS Data was showing a Pegasos G4 running Morphos. It was the only G4 Pegasos at the show
and it ran pretty fast.

ComputerCity, the host of the Benelux Show, had a large booth as well and they sold various amiga stuff including antenna boing balls, Amiga Monopoly and soft and hardware. I want to thank them for hosting a great show ... and for the coffee in the morning ;-)

Of course .. Amiga.org was there with the new magazine, t-shirts and live coverage. The first day we couldn't get the internet connection up and running but that changed on the second day. Both Friedens, Ron van Herk, Oliver Hannaford-Day, and Dennis Lohr where available for IRC Q&A in #Amiga.org. We also had 2 web cams covering the show.

I'll write more later today ... maybe :-)

Kees

Smore pictures can be found here ..

[whabang]

175 visitors

Yikes. Isn't that less than the shows in Gothenburg? :-o

[bbrv]

Yes whabang...that is a bit discouraging, BUT the folks there were all motivated and it only takes a few sparks to get the fire burning again...;-)

Nice report Kees. :-) So you are already dragging your new wife to computer shows!?!? Yikes! We may have to send more than t-shirts and socks....:-P Congratulations on the new magazine. Genesi will do it best to support the effort! :-D

R&B

[tintin]

Hmm, Belgians good beer drinkers ? Whatever gave you that idea ?

Shame I couldn't be there...

Thanx for the report.

[Floid]

That Tyragroup case is nice, rather close to an idea I had, which was inspired from one of the original Gatemiga concepts...

What I'd like to see are the drives and ports off to a side, either side-facing (in the classic 'lunchbox' style; one slim CD-RW or combo drive would be 'it'), or front-facing and allowing for a ridiculous number of bays. It'd eat more desk space (like a minitower next to an LCD, but with half the depth), but it'd allow for a ridiculous number of bays, and get the drives up off desks that tend to get cluttered with paperwork, input devices, loose tobacco if you're a slob like me... and allow the thing to sit further back (not so much a problem as panels scale to 21"+; using VESA mounts, you'd have to allow the mounting point to slide left/right, but that itself would be a convenience for dusting under the display), so that sort of mess would be further removed from the machine.

My original idea was to take the standing 'wedge' design (forget the name) with the LCD mount on the flat face and drive slot on the side, make it flat on one side (a-la Apple II, sort of), and provide some sort of flip-up retainer on the slanted face for a compact keyboard... voila, use it standing with an LCD, standing drive-side-out with a CRT, or flat A500/Apple-II style (with an LCD stood on the 'top?') depending on your particular space constraints.

If anyone builds *that,* feel free to send me a free one.

[Zorro]

Nice report ! Thanks...

[Kees]

So you are already dragging your new wife to computer shows!?!?

Hehe .. i'm guilty :-D