====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ || /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || -News and Rumors- / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_|| (An Occasional Newsletter) BACK FOR THE FUTURE || ====================================================================== AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga International, GmbH ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 970516 A M I G A I N T E R N A T I O N A L W O A S T A T E M E N T G A T E W A Y 2 0 0 0 W O A A N N O U N C E M E N T W O A D E V C O N T O M O R R O W ! G A T E W A Y S T O C K S P L I T , R E P U R C H A S E P H A S E 5 E X P A N D S P O W E R U P N E W A M I G A P R O M O T I O N G R O U P C L I C K B O O M A N D P O W E R U P C L O A N T O A T W O A A I R M A I L P R O T A K E S F L I G H T Editor's Thoughts and Introduction: Finally! What may be the most anticipated press conference in the Amiga's history has taken place. Held in London today as a prelude to the World of Amiga show opening tomorrow, it featured statements by both Amiga International and Gateway 2000 on their visions of the Amiga's future. While both statements are short on details, which shouldn't surprise you, both statements definitely show the companies do see a future for the Amiga. That wasn't a given, though it has been the sense of earlier remarks from both groups. We can't make a lot of definitive conclusions yet, but we do see some interesting points. First, the Amiga will continue as a computer line but will also see its technology used in other arenas. That's good news. Second, assistance in developing products is promised. Finally, an Open Amiga is envisioned, with the use of industry standard products. We don't think you need to worry about a "Wintel" Amiga, but rather we expect to see standard components used to keep the price down. The heart of the Amiga is its efficient operating system, not the somewhat out of date custom chips. It does look like AI has some plans for the chipset, however. Interestingly, nothing was said about new processor chips. We think that's significant. It may be that AI hasn't decided on a new Power PC based Amiga after all. The bad news is there's still a lot of mystery left to tantalize us all. The good news is, there's a lot of mystery left to tantalize us all - there might have been none. There is other news in the Amiga community today, and it all has a positive twist to it. We have a short announcement on the developers' conference being held tomorrow as part of the World of Amiga show, for anyone who might be close enough to attend. We're all so used to Amiga being associated with companies on the brink of death that the story below on Gateway's stock may be hard to believe. Please read it and enjoy it, it's real. Phase5 apparently thinks there's a future for Power PC in the Amiga community. We have an announcement below of expanded plans they've recently made public. We've been watching a little known Amiga collaboration for some time. Called the ARise Initiative, it has given birth to a new Amiga promotion organization. You'll find details below. We find it interesting that this organization is apparently referred to in the Amiga International WOA statement. We have some interesting product news also. clickBOOM, owners of one of the best game company names in any computer community, have come out strongly in support of Power PC Amigas. Cloanto, makers of the top Amiga paint program, have their own news to announce at WOA. And the Air Mail program from Toysoft is now available in a Pro version. Today, the future looks bright. Brad Webb, Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G A I N T E R N A T I O N A L W O A S T A T E M E N T Amiga International, Inc. Press Conference London, May 16, 1997 Petro Tyschtschenko: "Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests. I am looking around and I see a lot of people I know. People who have long experience with our AMIGA products and people who support AMIGA. It is nice to see that the AMIGA platform is gifted by a community of competent people. These strengths are going to be of critical importance for the success of the plans of AMIGA International, which I am going to explain to you later. Anyway, I am happy to see you all and I would like to welcome you on this press event. I believe there is a bright future for AMIGA International, Inc. Let me just explain a few details of importance, so that you can have a better understanding of what has happened to AMIGA since the Commodore days. Escom AG acquired AMIGA in April 1995. During this time, an effort was made to revitalize the AMIGA market, however Escom went into financial difficulties and filed for bankruptcy on July 15th, 1996. During this time, an effort was made to develop products, but due to financial difficulties, there has not been any significant amount of new product development by AMIGA over the past couple of years. Since filing for bankruptcy, we have been trying to keep the marketplace alive through inventory sales by the trustee. However, it has truly been AMIGA community that has kept AMIGA alive through the development of products based on newer technology and software application developments. Now that AMIGA is owned by a successful company - Gateway 2000 - there is a bright future. · Gateway 2000 is a solid and well established company in the computer industry · Gateway 2000 has consistently been honored with awards for products and service · Gateway 2000 is the right partner to give AMIGA new life and energy for the future. AMIGA International was formed as a US based company in March, 1997 to acquire the assets of AMIGA Technologies GmbH. AMIGA International will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Gateway 2000. Over the past month, we have been very busy finalizing the acquisition, performing due diligence, setting up operations in Germany and communicating with the AMIGA community. We have a new office in Langen, next to the Frankfurt airport and I am happy to report to you that we are operational again. In Langen, we will have three people handling sales, marketing and general administration. We will be running at the beginning of June. Since early April, we have four employees in Braunschweig that are taking care of logistics and warehousing, order processing and customer support, Internet support as well as technical service. Finally, we are in the process of identifying an individual to manage new product development and R&D. What are we going to concentrate on? Implementing our strategy. 1. Supporting the existing AMIGA community 2. Leveraging the existing AMIGA technology through broad licensing 3. Assisting in developing new products based on open standards to the home computer and video/graphics market. How will we support the community that has kept AMIGA alive? Through conventions, press conferences, via the Internet, meetings and all useful initiatives coming from the AMIGA community. I have already been to conventions in Germany and in Sweden and will entertain any suggestions. Continuing to sell to the distributor network that has supported AMIGA. Working with developers through concepts such as the "Open AMIGA Initiative" that is being formed with the support of many of the prominent names in the AMIGA community. The basics of success in this project is to work together with partners and to define a common path of development. The AMIGA market can not afford a split, we must go together into one direction. For us to keep the market alive it is neccessary to assist many companies in developing products through broad licensing. Our licensing policy will be very open, broad and focus on licensing and standard O/S, Chipsets and the trademarks. Also, licensing will allow the AMIGA to be spread to many different embedded applications in field such as medical solutions, simulation applications, fitness equipment, irrigation systems and kiosk terminals. Of course, we are looking for new partners. Through licensing and focused R&D managed by AMIGA International, we plan to assist the market place in developing new products for the AMIGA. We are currently exploring many of the possible new products that have been suggested including such things as an operating system upgrade and new hardware platforms. We would like to keep the procedure as simple as possible. We need to talk with the technology companies from the AMIGA business and exchange know-how. It is also important that we explore an open AMIGA platform, use industry standard components to make it cheaper to produce, faster to develop and easier to upgrade.These things need to happen quickly, but in a very managed fashion. With this strategy and the support of the AMIGA community and Gateway 2000, we are convinced there is a bright future for the AMIGA. That, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our presentation for today. Jim Taylor and myself will be available for MEDIA interviews. We hope that all of you will visit us at our booth, at the WORLD OF AMIGA conference. Thank you very much for your attention". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- G A T E W A Y 2 0 0 0 W O A A N N O U N C E M E N T Amiga International, Inc.: Gateway 2000 Info, May 16, 1997 AMIGA International Acquistion Finalized HAMMERSMITH, London, U.K., May 16, 1997 - AMIGA International, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gateway 2000, Inc. (Nasdaq: GATE), has finalized the acquisition of the assets of AMIGA Technologies. The announcement was made at a news conference prior to the opening of the World of Amiga conference in Hammersmith, London on Saturday, May 17 and Sunday, May 18. "We have received many communications from the AMIGA user community regarding the acquisition", said Jim Taylor, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing of Gateway 2000. "It is exciting to know how much support AMIGA continues to enjoy. Every AMIGA customer should know that we share their belief in this product and we believe that it has a strong role in our multimedia computing world". Taylor was joined at the news conference by Petro Tyschtschenko, Managing Director of AMIGA International. "The AMIGA platform is gifted by a community of talented people", said Tyschtschenko. "These strenghts will be of critical importance for the success of the plans of AMIGA International". Tyschtschenko outlined areas that AMIGA International is exploring to reinvigorate the AMIGA market by: · Supporting the existing AMIGA community · Leveraging the existing AMIGA technology through broad licensing · Assisting in developing new products based on open standards to the home computer and video/graphics market. AMIGA International, Inc. will operate as a seperate business unit of Gateway 2000. AMIGA International currently has operations in Braunschweig, Germany for Logistics and Service activities and has opened new offices near the Frankfurt airport in Langen, Germany where Sales and Marketing are located. AMIGA International can be reached on the World Wide Web at www.amiga.de. About Gateway 2000 Gateway 2000, Inc., a Fortune 500 company founded in 1985, is a global leader in the direct marketing of PCs. The company, headquartered in North Sioux City, South Dakota, has manufacturing facilities in the United States, Ireland and Malaysia, and employs over 9,700 people worldwide. Gateway 2000 products and services consistently win top awards from leading industry publications. In 1996, the company shipped 1.9 million systems and reported revenues of $5 billion and net income of $250 million. About AMIGA Since the introduction of the AMIGA 1000 in 1985, AMIGA has represented the embodiment of the efficient use of memory and hard drive capacity, while pioneering industry developments in multimedia, 32-bit multitasking and autoconfiguration. AMIGA led the industry in combining computer graphics, animation, and film sequences with stereo sound known today as multimedia. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- W O A D E V C O N T O M O R R O W ! 11 May 1997 The Developers Conference will be held at 5:30pm on Saturday 17th May, at the "Salon Bourg" in the Novotel, following that days closing of the exhibitors room. The meeting is expected to last about 2 hours. The meeting will be chaired by Kermit Woodall of Nova Design who as some people may know was also responsible for the extremely successful conference at Amiga Gateway '97. There will of course be no charge for entry, however since this event is being funded by the nice folks in the AmigaSOC users group and we would greatly appreciate any contributions as this would help us in reclaiming some of their costs towards arranging this event. Further details are available from our website (http://www.qmw.ac.uk/~amiga/dev2news.html). Andrew Elia (AmigaSoc) and Kermit Woodall (Nova Design) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- G A T E W A Y S T O C K S P L I T , R E P U R C H A S E FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Company Also Heading To New York Stock Exchange North Sioux City, S.D., May 15, 1997 - Gateway 2000 (Nasdaq: GATE) today announced a two-for-one stock split of its common shares, a share repurchase program and an impending move to the New York Stock Exchange. At the Company's annual shareholders' meeting in Sioux City, Ted Waitt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, told shareholders that the Board of Directors has authorized a two-for-one stock split to shareholders of record on June 2, 1997. The distribution is expected to occur on or about June 16, 1997. Since its initial public offering in December of 1993, Gateway's shares have appreciated more than 300%. "The stock split," according to Waitt, "will improve the liquidity and should help improve the stability of our trading patterns for all our shareholders, particularly the larger institutional holders." As of May 7, 1997, Gateway has approximately 77 million shares outstanding. Upon completion of the split, the number will increase to approximately 154 million shares. The Gateway 2000 Board of Directors has also authorized a stock repurchase program under which the company may purchase up to 10 million shares (adjusted for stock split) of common stock in open market or negotiated transactions. Shares repurchased will be available for issuance to employees under the company's stock-based employee benefit plans. According to Waitt, "Recently, we have seen occasions when the stock seemed undervalued in the market. We have a great deal of confidence in the company and, if the right opportunities present themselves, repurchasing some of the outstanding shares is one of the best investments we could make at this time." Gateway also announced that its common stock has been accepted for listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and expects to begin trading on the Big Board under the new symbol GTW on Thursday, May 22, 1997. Waitt said, "We believe the company and its shareholders will benefit from this move to the NYSE. This change should provide lower transaction costs and result in a more efficient market for the stock. While Gateway's stock on the Nasdaq has performed well over the last three years by dealer market standards, we have reached the point where listing on the NYSE will deliver substantial benefits to our company and shareholders." NYSE President and Chief Operating Officer William R. Johnston, addressing shareholders at the Sioux City meeting, called the addition of Gateway 2000 to the Big Board a tremendous move for both the company and the Exchange. "Gateway 2000 is one of America's best business stories," said Johnston. "Their move to the New York Stock Exchange underscores the leadership positions both organizations enjoy in their respective fields." In other news, shareholders reelected Ted Waitt, Chase Carey and Jim McCann to the Board of Directors. Waitt told the 250 shareholders gathered for the meeting that the company intended to pursue an aggressive global growth strategy in 1997. Specifically, the company considers the major account and portables business to be significant opportunities over the course of the year. Waitt referred to new data from one of the industry's leading research firms that named Gateway 2000 as the leader in brand loyalty, repurchase intentions and the education sector as indicative of the momentum the company has generated over the first quarter of the year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- P H A S E 5 E X P A N D S P O W E R U P phase 5 digital products expands the PowerUp product line Oberursel, May 12, 1997: phase 5 digital products today announced the expansion of the PowerUp product family for Amiga computers. Beside the two products that had been announced earlier, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 603e Power Board, there will be an additional model for the A12000, the Blizzard 603e+ Power Board, which combines the PowerPC RISC processor with an 68040 or 68060 CPU, as well as a model for the Amiga 1500/2000, the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. Additionally, it has been decided that all PowerUp board will come with SCSI on board instead of beeing an option, which adds additional value to these products. With this expanded product line, phase 5 digital products offers a complete line of PowerUp accelerators for the Amiga 1200, 1500/2000, 3000 and 4000 models, and provides a smooth upgrade path for owners of 68030-, 68040- or 68060-based accelerators. Additionally, phase 5 will release a fast graphics card as an add-on to those PowerUp models that go into the desktop and tower models, namely the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. The 1997 PowerUp accelerator product line includes the follwoing models: Cyberstorm PPC The Cyberstorm PPC accelerator is the high-end PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 3000/4000(T) systems and systems with a compatible processor slot. It features a high-performance PowerPC604e RISC processor in different clock speeds and a socket for either a 68040 or a 68060 processor, a memory expansion option for up to 128 MByte of ultra-fast 64-bit memory, a Wide-Ultra-SCSI controller on board and an expansion slot for high-performance expansions such as the CyberVisionPPC (see below). This board is ideally suited for all A3000/A4000 users who already own an accelerator with either a 68040 or 68060 processor; for Cyberstorm users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer. Blizzard 603e Power Board The Blizzard 603e Power Board is the inexpensive PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 1200 systems. It features a high-performance PowerPC603e RISC processor @ 175 MHz clock speed and a socket for a 68030 companion processor @ 50 MHz, a memory expansion option for up to 64 MByte of high-speed memory, and a Fast-SCSI-II controller on board. This board is ideally suited for all A1200 users who already own an accelerator with a socketed 68030 processor; for Blizzard 1230-II, Blizzard 1230-III and Blizzard 1230-IV users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer. Blizzard 603e+ Power Board The Blizzard 603e+ Power Board is the high-end PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 1200 systems. It features a high-performance PowerPC603e RISC processor @ 200 MHz clock speed and a socket for a 68040 or 68060 companion processor, a memory expansion option for up to 64 MByte of high-speed memory, and a Fast-SCSI-II controller on board. This board will be ideally suited for all A1200 users who already own an accelerator with a 68040 or 68060 processor; for Blizzard 1240T/ERC and Blizzard 1260 users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer. Blizzard 2604e Power Board The Blizzard 2604e Power Board is the high-end PowerUp accelerator for Amiga 2000 (in the UK Amiga 1500) systems. It features a high-performance PowerPC604e RISC processor and a socket for either a 68040 or a 68060 companion processor, a memory expansion option for up to 128 MByte of ultra-fast 64-bit memory, a Wide-Ultra-SCSI controller on board and an expansion slot for high-performance expansions such as the CyberVisionPPC (see below). This board is ideally suited for all A1500/A2000 users who already own an accelerator with either a 68040 or 68060 processor; for Blizzard 2040/2060 users it will be the PowerUp upgrade offer. For information on technical specifications of the PoerUp accelerator product family, refer to the PowerUp Specifications CyberVisionPPC - A high-end graphic card for use with the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board The CyberVisionPPC is a high-performance graphic card which can be installed on the expnasion slot of the PowerPC604e-based PowerUp Accelerators, the Cyberstorm PPC and the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. It is scheduled for delivery in August, and will become available simultaneously with the Blizzard 2604 Power Board. Especially for the Blizzard 2604 the use of the CyberVisionPPC is highly recommended as the slow access to the ECS chip memory or Zorro-II-based graphics boards in the A1500/A2000 may limit the system performance in applications with lots of graphic output; but also the performance of the Cyberstorm PPC will benefit significantly from the data transfer rates of up to 100 MB/s (from the processor into the video memory) in demanding applications such as fast 3D visualization and similar tasks. Not only the ultra-fast access of the processor into the video memory, but also the internal performance of the CyberVisionPPC will provide a breathtaking performance. The CyberVisionPPC is equipped with the powerful PERMEDIA graphics controller, which provides an outstanding 3D performance of up to 42 million textured 3D pixels per second, with hardware-accelerated rendering functions such as z-buffering, gouraud-shading, fogging, blending and anti-aliasing. As the design of the PERMEDIA hardware suits perfectly for OpenGL implementations, it's 3D performance can support the CyberGL functionality of CyberGraphX V3 Native which comes along with the PowerUp boards. In combination with the high floating-point performance of the PowerPC604e processor a breathtaking performance in professional 3D applications can be achieved by this implementation. Additionally, the PERMEDIA processor supports functions like color space conversion, chroma keying and XY-scaling which will be used by the software MPEG decoding routines of CyberGraphX V3 Native. The CyberVisionPPC used 64-bit wide SGRAM with a data transfer rate of up to 660 MB/s; this in combination with the fast RAM-DAC allows display resolutions of up to 1280x1024 pixel in true color mode and with a high refresh rate of at least 70 Hz. The boards comes along with 4 MB of display memory as standard. The recommended price for the CyberVisionPPC will be at UK Pound 219.00; customers of a PowerUp upgrade can buy this board for a special rate of UK Pound 189.00. In the USA the recommended price for the CyberVisionPPC will be at US$ 299.00; customers of a PowerUp upgrade can buy this board for a special rate of US$ 239.00. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- N E W A M I G A P R O M O T I O N G R O U P FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 14 May 1997 The Jay Miner Society for Independent Computing 140 West 24th St., NY, NY 10011, USA. THE AMIGA INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL AND THE OPEN AMIGA WORKGROUP (ICOA) For the past nine months, an international cross section of Amiga developers, original Amiga and Commodore veterans and informed Amiga users (The ARise Initiative), have been discussing, debating, analysing and deliberating over the future of the Amiga platform. This culminated in the creation of the Industry Council/Open Amiga working group (ICOAWG), a formal project built around the two most promising ideas to come from the study. The Industry Council proposes a co-operative forum of serious Amiga designers and developers, providing them with a forum in which they can debate, create and plan for the future of the platform as a single set of focused concerns rather than competing against each other and wasting time and resources re-inventing the wheel. The Open Amiga is seen as one of the by-products of the Industry Council. First, it would work towards the establishment of a common set of Open API's, protocols and specifications. Secondly it would lobby for the creation of a shrink-wrapped Amiga operating system that could run potentially on any platform, platform specific HALs (Hardware Abstraction Layers) providing the translations that would allow Open AmigaOS to run on disparate systems. A week ago, the formal project proposal was dispatched to Gateway for their consideration and inclusion in their future plans for the Amiga. We are pleased to announce that Gateway favorably responded to the outreach by the ICOA, without endorsing ICOA or any strategy thus far offered. This weekend, at the World of Amiga show in London, representatives of ICOA workgroup will be giving a presentation at the Amiga Society's Developers Conference (DEVCON), on Saturday. If you are an Amiga Developer, please attend. If you are an Amiga User, please stop by at the Finale Developments booth at WOA. They have kindly offered us a space to present the ICOA initiative. We look forward to seeing you there. For any further information please contact the project manager, Fleecy Moss at fleecy@netreach.net Skal Loret Director of Communications The Jay Miner Society for The Advancement of Personal Computing skal@nac.net The Industry Council Open Amiga Initiative (ICOA) is sponsored and supported by the Jay Miner Society for The Advance of Personal Computing. A non-profit society incorporated in the State of New York. JMS has no economic association with any company, nor does the JMS specifically endorse any Amiga-oriented Companies, Products or Commercial Concerns. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- C L I C K B O O M A N D P O W E R U P clickBOOM Supports Power Up FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Toronto, May 5, 1997: PXL computers and clickBOOM are proud to announce a cooperation with Phase 5 Digital Products on making games for Power Amiga. "We strongly believe that the future for the Amiga computer lies in PowerPC processor. Furthermore, we believe Phase 5 is and will continue to be the Amiga hardware leader. Therefore, we have selected Power Amiga as our future platform of choice", says Alexander Petrovic, PXL and clickBOOM producer. Appropriately enough, the first ever Power Amiga game will be Myst from clickBOOM. It is a perfect opportunity for Myst and PowerUp accelerators to appear at the same time. Following Myst, other forth coming clickBOOM "killer games" will be fully optimized for the PowerPC chip, as well. Phase 5 Digital Products highly appreciates the development of Myst for the PowerUp accelerators and the plans of clickBOOM to add PowerUp support to more titles in the future. "We are happy to see how engaged clickBOOM has realized all their ambitious projects in the past, and we are excited that their new projects will be targeted for the PowerUp accelerators" says Wolf Dietrich of phase 5. "Beside all the demanding creativity software that we expect to come for the PowerUp boards, it's good to see powerful games with the real thrill coming also soon. What would such a powerhorse Amiga be without some breathtaking amusement? Still fast, but less fun... It's really impressive and good to see that clickBOOM is in the front line of visionary development for a new performance dimension." Support for Power Amigas will have several distinct advantages: 1. It will give users a valid reason to upgrade as soon as PowerPC boards become available. 2. New clickBOOM games written for Power Amiga will be breathtaking and a serious competition to the games on other platforms. This in return, will make the rest of the industry look very positively on the Amiga market. 3. Impressive CPU power will allow clickBOOM a technical freedom to convert any big game from other platforms to the Power Amiga. The exact timeline of clickBOOM Power Amiga releases is still to be decided. Currently, clickBOOM's strategy can be outlined in two steps: 1. Starting with Myst, a couple of forth coming projects will support both 680x0 and PowerPC chip. 2. ClickBOOM will use this transitional period to work on a first Power Amiga-only "killer" game. After its release, all the following games will be Power Amiga-only. For more information about our future strategy visit clickBOOM web site at www.clickboom.com We hope you like our plan and share our vision. Naturally, for the Power Amiga to ultimately succeed we need your support and input. As always, please feel free to contact us at info@clickboom.com Best regards, PXL computers and clickBOOM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- C L O A N T O A T W O A Cloanto Launches Personal Paint 7.1 at World of Amiga Show in London After weeks of sleepless nights, we have the pleasure to announce that the Personal Paint 7.1 package will be launched at the World of Amiga show in London this week-end. The new CD-ROM not only contains the first Amiga PowerPC code ever shipped (excluding developer tools), but also adds dozens of new features, including: o Finely-tuned 68000, 68020, 68030 and 68040 editions of Personal Paint 7.1 o New Rexx scripts, including text animation and animation paths o Improved blitter emulation and support of third-party graphics.library enhancements to store bitmaps in Fast RAM instead of Chip RAM o Improved support for environments like Siamese RTG, UAE, PowerPC and popular Amiga utilities o Loads TIM graphics directly from Sony PlayStation CDs, with extended TIM saving options for developers o New user interface languages (now totalling 16 languages) o Improved and extended manuals (in English, German and Italian) o Cloanto Internet graphics DataTypes (GIF, JPEG, PNG and XBM) o GIF utilities by third parties o Special bonus: Cloanto ColorType 3.1 software Some of these enhancements, including a free upgrade of the main program from version 7.0 to version 7.1, will be released on Aminet in the "biz/cloan" directory immediately after the show. For additional information, please write to info@cloanto.com, or visit the Cloanto "Web Workbench" at http://www.cloanto.com/amiga/. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A I R M A I L P R O T A K E S F L I G H T 12 May, 1997 Availability: Mid May, 1997 Toysoft Development Inc. the makers of the only commercial email program for the Amiga has announced the release of Air Mail Pro for Magic User Interface (MUI) and Class Act environments. Air Mail Pro is a powerful and yet easy to use Internet email program for sending and receiving messages using SMTP and POP protocols. Air Mail Pro has all the features of the original version plus more. New features in Air Mail Pro includes: more preferences are added for user customization, log file to keep track of all incoming and outgoing messages, new interface for composing messages, multiple ASCII signatures, automatically get notified when a user receives your message (only works if both users are using Air Mail Pro), additional forms are included, import and export Address book, supports multiple email accounts. A new Helper preference has been added to support MIME formatted messages. Air Mail Pro can now display any types of pictures eg: GIF, IFF, JPEG or PNG or play any types of sounds eg: IFF, AU or WAVE and animations such as MPEG, CDXL, AVI or Quicktime using the external helper programs. Both MUI and ClassAct version are identical in features and can be installed on the same system without any conflicts. The MUI version requires MUI v3.2 or higher and the ClassAct version includes all the BOOPSI libraries, a minimum of one meg of free RAM is recommended after TCP/IP stack is loaded. Air Mail Pro is compatible with AmiTCP, Miami, TermiteTCP and Mlink. Air Mail Pro is $40.00 US plus $5.00 US for shipping and handling in North America and $7.00 US for shipping and handling worldwide. Please state the MUI or ClassAct version when ordering. Registered users of Air Mail v4.2 MUI version will automatically be given free upgrade thru email. If you have not gotten your free upgrade please contact Toysoft Development Inc. All other registered users of Air Mail can upgrade to Air Mail Pro MUI or ClassAct version for $15.00 US plus $5.00 US for shipping and handling in North America and $7.00 US for shipping and handling worldwide. Also contact Toysoft Development Inc. for competitive upgrades. For more information please contact: Toysoft Development Inc. 131 - 64 Ave N. W. Calgary Alberta T2K 0L9 Canada Tel: 1-403-680-1656 Email: toysoft@spots.ab.ca WWW: http://www.spots.ab.ca/~toysoft Danny Wong Toysoft Development Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Update on the net: some issues available at: http://www.sharbor.com/amiga/news/ (in html format) http://www.amigacom.com (in ASCII text) Australian Mirror Site: http://www.comcen.com.au/~paulm/index.html All back issues available (in ASCII text) at: http://www.globaldialog.com/AdventureCentral/AU/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1997 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified. ====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ || /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || Brad Webb/AmigaUpdate /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || bandr@globaldialog.com / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_ || ======================================================================