As I write this, I'm waiting for Amiga Inc to let me know what they are doing. By the time you read this, all should be clear, but right now there's a mass of confusion with regard to exactly what is happening with our machine, phase 5 are announcing machines left, right and centre based around super duper G3 PPC chips and the world waits with bated breath for the BoXeR and the A5000. There's talk of replacing the Amiga's aging (and not very bug-free) Zorro slot standard with the PCI bus, and adding things like AGP ports to Amiga motherboards. In other news, Play, Inc., the company that was formed by ex-Newtek staff and Digital Creations, have been very bullish about their Trinity thing which is seen as the PC's equivalent of the Video Toaster. They've even gone as far as to say "May the Amiga rest in peace" on their print adverts. You'll be pleased to note that although the Trinity hardware promises great things with its 20 custom chips and dedicated processors - it's apparently no advance over a stable Toaster/Flyer solution, even if Newtek don't like to talk about their Amiga heritage right now.

The upshot of all this is the fact that people don't like the uncertainty that surrounds them on this platform of ours. I applaud you in your decision to stick with the Amiga (which you must have done if you are reading this, alternatively, you might just be mad), but everyone has moments of doubt. It will have been a year since the shock announcement that Gateway were the new owners of the Amiga, and yet nothing much seems to have happened since that time despite all of Gateway's bluster. In emails and letters I receive every day people ask me what kind of lead Amiga Inc is going to take over the whole market and I have to tell these people that I just don't know - which is not only disheartening to hear, it's also disheartening to have to tell people.

The result is that people seek out the security of that other platform with all its millions of ways to empty your wallet, and the longer that Amiga Inc take to make an announcement, the more money Gateway will make from people migrating to the other machine that they make. This is not good news for you, or for us if we want to continue publishing our magazine. All I can do is repeat my call to you to invest further in your machines - buying software and hardware, and as much of it as you can afford. That way, by demonstrating that there is still a vibrant market out there for the Amiga, we can keep our machines alive regardless of Amiga Inc.'s seeming inaction.