21.Oct.2003
Daniel Miller
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Report from Pegasos Technology Demonstration in Washington DC, USA
In his report from the Pegasos Technology Demonstration, which took place Oct. 18th in Washington DC, USA, Daniel Miller writes the following:
MorphOS, Linux, AmiNetRadio, FxPaint, MPlayer, Kaya, ImageFX, free Superbundles, fresh MOS1.4 CDs with IBM stamp, ProStationAudio, presentations, the "VCR" case, complete system pricings, Peg II picture, MOS1.5 timing, MadBomber, and more.
From start to finish this was a really classy affair. I am local to the area and was invited to bring and show my own Pegasos, but this didn't stop me from checking out the scene and watching the presentations. Genesi personnel were really on a mission, giving personal attention, and striving to show the technology at its mindblowing best.
The chief exhibitor was magneticsystemsnyc.com who drove down from Brooklyn with a squad of state-of-the-art Pegasoses, including one of the few G4 models we have on this side of the pond. Four of those systems were configured for MorphOS, the fifth did double duty as an MoL/Debian (Gnome) machine. In addition to my comparatively home-spun system, there was a nice array of Genesi paraphenalia such as a plexuscom concept case, spinning illuminated Peg motherboards, a mechanical butterfly, a sampling of shrinkwrapped games, a Catweasel flipper for display, posters, sellsheets, free Superbundle (v. 3) and MOS1.4 IBM stamp limited silk screen edition CDs. Jammin'!
Now the stuff was neat, and the people were neater, but I must say seeing the cutting edge MOS systems in action was even more neat than that. It was... neat-o! Where to start? well, one of the more striking things was AmiNetRadio. As much as anything else this really illustrated one aspect of the future as Genesi sees it. The live radio stations scroll down in a list, and you select your favorite genre. It very quickly picks up the stream and your music plays. Most streams were at 128, some at 64, so this is fairly high fidelity. You can record your streams to MP3 files on your hard-drive, and them play them in Kaya. This all occurs effortlessly. Why does this illustrate part of Genesi's vision? They see themselves providing media, audio, visual, audiovisual and games via similar tools. Customers are then able to access their favorite media whether they are on walking trails with the planned Eclipsis handheld device, in their homes at their home theater, or at their workplace, whatever. You don't carry around a CD or plunk a videotape in the VCR, you just select your media on whatever device you are nearest and play it. Genesi believes that all this media including high resolution movies will be deliverable as the Pegaos progresses and new Genesi products are introduced. So that's the concept, maybe you like it, maybe you love it.
Another concept, this one now reality, is the "VCR" Pegasos. This was introduced by magneticsystemsnyc.com. What is it? It's a Pegasos in a small case that looks sort of like a VCR. This is offered as a complete Pegasos II system. If you don't want to muck around with assembling your own, you can consider getting one of these. It's nice and uses a half height Radeon video card. I like this, because it is an early step in the shrink-down evolution of Pegasos from standard desktop to set-top box to the handheld computer which is conceptualized to have all the power of a Pegasos.
Bill and Raquel from Genesi were there, as always demonstrating their personal commitment to the platform and its development, and supporting the rest of the Genesi team working towards the goal of a advanced, mature, popular, modern, alternative computer system.
More software: MPlayer was all over the frickin' place. People who demonstrated this system have recognized a winner. On just a G3 600 Mhz Pegasos running MorphOS 1.4 Mplayer is the most quickloading, responsive, compatible videoplayer ever on any platform. I am not spinning you, everybody says this. We all need to send the Mplayer programmers five dollars right now or something. There are few sublime pleasures in life as the first time you starting moving an MPlayer window opaquely around the screen, and realize that there is zero stutter or distortion, no matter how fast you circle it around. Hi-res letterbox or whatever. Of course it goes full screen and has a bunch of control features too.
There was some new image editing software from NovaDesign shown. They make well-established graphical prodcuts like ImageFX and Aladdin 4D. I was not clear on the details, but there is the intention to offer some form of this new software with future MorphOS versions, the Superbundle, or both. This is a clear potential asset to the Pegasos MorphOS product. The prospect of a revamped Aladdin4D ray tracing program for MOS was also talked about. ProStationAudio was shown. This is a really advanced sort of product with a detailed, intricate interface and all these channels and mixing controls and a lot of busy stuff going on all over the screen. It was shown mixing some tracks and certainly sounded good. It seems to me that this is a product for an audio professional, but maybe a casual home user can have fun with it too. Gotta go, I will have to write some more later, especially about... MadBomber!!!
PS: The BB half of BBRV stated MorphOS 1.5 would appear before the new year. Don't let them forget about that TCP-IP stack, thanks.
Photos of the event can be found at PegasosPPC.com.
(snx)
[News message: 21. Oct. 2003, 12:42] [Comments: 0]
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