Sticking in the orient this month again, I am reminded of the way that the South Koreans clubbed together to get their economy out of a fix. I remember watching the news and thinking that you'd never get British people doing that - handing in their jewellery or art treasures or stocks and bonds, just to help the country.

Seeing it made me think of a way to improve the Amiga market no end. If only absolutely everyone who owns an Amiga could be persuaded to spend at least a tenner a month on their machine (that's less than three packs of fags, or five pints of beer, or four visits to MickeyD's), buy a game, save up for a couple of months and get a 32Mb SIMM, or a bit longer and get a CD-ROM drive, but make sure you do so, then perhaps it will help to keep Amiga dealers in the market.

By the same count, let shops like Electronics Boutique, HMV and Game know that you would be pleased to buy your Amiga purchases in their shops but are going to take your £30 elsewhere since they don't stock anything for your machine. Sure, one person on their own is going to feel a bit silly doing this, but if you all go out there and do it, that's 22,000 people plus all saying that they want Amiga stuff to exist in the shops - a voice that's bound to be heard in the head office of these companies. The Amiga market's decline has become a vicious circle. Let's see if we can break out of it. For myself, I'm saving up to get a CyberStorm PPC card for my A3000T. What are you doing to help?

By the way, if you like the map image to the left, you may be interested in seeing more of these copyright-free maps. I got this one from The Perry-Castañeda Map Library