Nice article, the A600 was indeed a strange machine to be released between the A500+ and A1200, and the PCMCIA port was a curious choice at the time.
Some thoughts:
* Commodore could have added a faster 68000, and it seems like a good idea in theory. But in order for a faster CPU to have any meaningful impact, they would have needed to add either a sizeable cache or, preferably, some real fastmem (memory that isn't shared with the custom graphics and audio hardware). This would have raised the cost significantly.
* The text doesn't mention the Amiga 500 Plus, also released in 1992, just before the A600. It was an upgraded A500 featuring Kickstart 2.0, the ECS chipset and 1 meg of chipmem. People who had bought an A500+ felt fooled by Commodore, and rightly so: Adding a hard drive to the A600 meant the cost of a stand-alone 2.5" IDE drive. Adding one to an A500/+ involved a sidecar expansion that cost about as much as the computer itself.
* The A600 was squeezed in between the A500+ and the A1200, which means that in 1993, you could buy an A500+ for £199, an A600 for £199 or an A1200 for £299 - all of them supposed entry-level machines. Very confusing for consumers.
* It wasn't really fully software-compatible with the A500. In part because of the newer Kickstart, in part because of the lack of the A500's peculiar "slowfast" memory that many games took for granted, and in part because of the newer ECS chipset. The same problems afflicted the A500+, and meant that large amounts of already existing games just didn't work. This was the fault of the software houses, sure, but gamers looking for a good deal didn't care; they'd rather buy a second-hand A500 than gamble with an incompatible machine that offered no significant hardware upgrade.
* People in the know who were on the market for an Amiga in 1993 or 1994 probably bought an A1200.
> * The A600 was squeezed in between the A500+ and the A1200, which means that in 1993, you could buy an A500+ for £199, an A600 for £199 or an A1200 for £299 - all of them supposed entry-level machines. Very confusing for consumers.
If commodore loved anything it was to release products designed to compete with themselves.
Having different products for different market segments is often a good idea. But in many cases Commodore released simultaneous products to compete for the same market segment.
I honestly can't tell if it was stupid or genius of them, on a corporate level, to sell cheap PC:s that directly competed with Amigas in the home segment. On the one hand, they helped usher in the demise of their own cash cow. On the other hand, there was no shortage of competition from other home PC manufacturers.
Some thoughts:
* Commodore could have added a faster 68000, and it seems like a good idea in theory. But in order for a faster CPU to have any meaningful impact, they would have needed to add either a sizeable cache or, preferably, some real fastmem (memory that isn't shared with the custom graphics and audio hardware). This would have raised the cost significantly.
* The text doesn't mention the Amiga 500 Plus, also released in 1992, just before the A600. It was an upgraded A500 featuring Kickstart 2.0, the ECS chipset and 1 meg of chipmem. People who had bought an A500+ felt fooled by Commodore, and rightly so: Adding a hard drive to the A600 meant the cost of a stand-alone 2.5" IDE drive. Adding one to an A500/+ involved a sidecar expansion that cost about as much as the computer itself.
* The A600 was squeezed in between the A500+ and the A1200, which means that in 1993, you could buy an A500+ for £199, an A600 for £199 or an A1200 for £299 - all of them supposed entry-level machines. Very confusing for consumers.
* It wasn't really fully software-compatible with the A500. In part because of the newer Kickstart, in part because of the lack of the A500's peculiar "slowfast" memory that many games took for granted, and in part because of the newer ECS chipset. The same problems afflicted the A500+, and meant that large amounts of already existing games just didn't work. This was the fault of the software houses, sure, but gamers looking for a good deal didn't care; they'd rather buy a second-hand A500 than gamble with an incompatible machine that offered no significant hardware upgrade.
* People in the know who were on the market for an Amiga in 1993 or 1994 probably bought an A1200.