The Icon Bar: A6 A6+

Advantage 6, which is of course the lovechild of Stuart Tyrrell, have announced the A6+, their new PC cube/RISC OS emulator.

Touted as "StrongARM performance - ARM7500 Price", the shiny little Shuttle-style box now has a backlit LCD panel on the front with all sorts of cool techy stuff on it. <fx: cut to chase>The PC underneath is an AMD 3200+, 512MB DDR400 memory, 160GB HDD, Geforce FX5200 128MB graphics, card reader etc. The price is £1100+VAT with a 17" TFT monitor.

If the moths in your wallet mean you can't stretch to buying one, you could always head to the Wakefield show (15th/16th May!) and win it - one will be given away as the grand prize in the draw!

<fx: aside>This of course is not the orange mystery machine which A6 will also be launching at the show. The A75 seems to be a RISC OS native machine, although I'll confirm that when Stu gets back with the answers to those questions we've all been bombarding him with...

A6 A6+

Phlamethrower (10:29 10/5/2004)
  flibble (10:44 10/5/2004)
    rich (10:50 10/5/2004)
      flibble (11:08 10/5/2004)
        JWCR (12:56 10/5/2004)
          ianj (17:23 10/5/2004)
            ad (20:47 10/5/2004)
              fwibbler (21:00 10/5/2004)
                guestx (12:10 11/5/2004)
                  flibble (13:34 11/5/2004)
                    rich (13:09 12/5/2004)

Jeffrey Lee

Message #92917, posted by Phlamethrower at 10:29, 10/5/2004

Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff

Posts: 15100

"StrongARM performance - Over double ARM7500 Price" is a bit more like it ;)

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Peter Howkins

Message #92918, posted by flibble at 10:44, 10/5/2004, in reply to message #92917

Posts: 892

If your wallet can't stretch to buying one, you could always build a PC yourself ... 1292ukp for a PC is painfully expensive.

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Richard Goodwin

Message #92919, posted by rich at 10:50, 10/5/2004, in reply to message #92918

Dictator for life
Posts: 6828

I think we've been over this before when the A6 came out. If you build it yourself, you don't usually get a legit copy of Windows, and RISC OS, and the 17" TFT in the price. So yeah, I specced out a similar machine for about £350 - but it didn't even have a HDD, optical drive, monitor, graphics card etc. etc. because they'd be "donated" from my existing machine.

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Peter Howkins

Message #92920, posted by flibble at 11:08, 10/5/2004, in reply to message #92919

Posts: 892

As long as people realise they can walk into any PC shop, buy a complete legit system and then buy a seperate copy VARPC for much under that price I don't mind. I'm happy for people to spend that much on a PC out of stupidity, but not because they don't know of the alternatives ;)

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John Campbell Rees

Message #92921, posted by JWCR at 12:56, 10/5/2004, in reply to message #92920

Member
Posts: 6

This just boggles the mind. People will be able to spend £1110 on the emulated version of RISC OS, but not on a machine like the the IyonixPC which runs the OS natively on ARM based hardware.

Alternaively, this could be a fiendish marketing ploy for a machine everyone is expecting to be a native RISC OS machine, the A75. By having the A75 as a reasonably priced well specced machine that is massively cheaper than the official emulation solution.

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Ian Jeffray

Message #92922, posted by ianj at 17:23, 10/5/2004, in reply to message #92921

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Posts: 4

JWCR> The obvious reason for that is that Iyonix runs a crap version of RISC OS, the A6+ does not. :-)

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Andrew Duffell

Message #92923, posted by ad at 20:47, 10/5/2004, in reply to message #92922

Prints of Yarm

Posts: 3262

Let's not get into a RISC OS 5/Select flame war please.

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fwibbler

Message #92924, posted by fwibbler at 21:00, 10/5/2004, in reply to message #92923

Posts: 320

Indeed!
Some people want the features of Select while others are prepared to forgoe <? them for the performance of the Iyonix. Thats all there is to it!

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GuestX

Message #92925, posted by guestx at 12:10, 11/5/2004, in reply to message #92924

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Posts: 102

rich: "If you build it yourself, you don't usually get a legit copy of Windows"

Who cares about Windows? Various Shuttle models come with Linux CDs thrown in (admittedly Mandrake, but it's a start).

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Peter Howkins

Message #92926, posted by flibble at 13:34, 11/5/2004, in reply to message #92925

Posts: 892

guestx: but then you can't run VirtualRiscPC ...

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Richard Goodwin

Message #92927, posted by rich at 13:09, 12/5/2004, in reply to message #92926

Dictator for life
Posts: 6828

rich: "If you build it yourself, you don't usually get a legit copy of Windows"
Who cares about Windows? Various Shuttle models come with Linux CDs thrown in (admittedly Mandrake, but it's a start).

Let's not turn this into a Windows vs Linux debate - the point is that the price of the A6 includes a legit version of Windows, where a hand-built box won't, and a good percentage of people will have to take this into account. If you're a Linux user then chances are you're not interested in buying a ready-built Shuttle-type box anyway.

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