New Amiga Forever Online Edition from Cloanto

IMAGINE...

Imagine an Amiga with more Zorro III Fast RAM, Chip RAM and Video RAM than you have ever dreamed of. An Amiga with virtual memory, a floating point unit, and a processor which you can set to be as slow and compatible as a 68000, or faster than a 68060. An Amiga with multiple CPUs, DVD storage, Fast Ethernet and a 128-bit graphics bus. An Amiga that can run Windows software without performance penalty, multitasking with Amiga programs, side by side. An Amiga that will protect your software investment and your experience, continuing to run your favorite applications even in 50 years. An Amiga that will give you no worries about spare parts or repair centers. An Amiga designed to keep the pace as new CPUs are released, and at the same time remain compatible with older programs which access the hardware directly, or which rely on features and effects that stunned the world and made the Amiga... an Amiga.

AMIGA HEROES

There is a group of Amiga engineers whose names and faces do not often appear on glossy Amiga magazines, and when they do, they are sometimes described as if they belonged to some exotic fringe. Yet for the past years these people have not made empty promises: they have worked hard and discretely, and they have delivered, day after day, month after month, release after release, exciting features and constant improvements. These creative geniuses, which so well represent the Amiga spirit, which is not just an abstract "faith", but passion at work, have given the Amiga the gift of immortality. Their Amiga is the only Amiga that has not stopped evolving many years ago. The work of these Amiga heroes, led and inspired by Bernd Schmidt and Petter Schau, creators of UAE and Fellow, will make it possible for any "new generation" system employing an operating system incompatible with the Amiga, to run everybody's favorite Amiga software, regardless of whether the CPU will come from Motorola, Intel, Transmeta or some alien technology.

AMIGA FOREVER

More than a year ago, in response to a clear and strong demand, and to guarantee stability and continued support to all of its users, Cloanto licensed from the Amiga companies all the copyrights, patents and trademarks necessary to publish an "Amiga on a CD", ready to run on a variety of platforms. Amiga Forever was born. Before its release, online piracy of the Amiga intellectual property had contributed to create a situation where emulation was almost considered a dirty word. Things have now considerably improved: with Amiga Forever, the emulated Amiga is not only an official, respected and essential member of the Amiga family, but also one that ranks at the top spots of the Amiga charts. Most important, it is an Amiga that is available today, which doubles in power every 18 months, and that will continue to run for a very, very long time.

During the fall of 1998, the first Online Edition of Amiga Forever was released. It became the first Amiga software title available for sale and download entirely by electronic means in hundreds of online stores. To make this possible, Cloanto partnered with Digital River, the world's leading electronic distributor, with a reputation for reliable and secure transactions, and preferred by leading companies such as Adobe, Corel, Lotus and IBM for their own online software sales. Once again, the Amiga was playing in the first league.

Today, a new version of Amiga Forever Online Edition is available for download. More than a dozen software packages have been added to the previous configuration. Everything, including the emulation software, the Amiga OS and additional Amiga programs, comes preconfigured for immediate use. All users of the previous version are eligible for a free upgrade, and have been sent instructions.

The package includes a new version of Amiga Explorer, the networking software developed by Cloanto to connect Amiga and PC systems. Personal Paint 7.1 and TurboText are now also part of the distribution. The Shell has been extended with KingCON, and a ToolManager dock on the Workbench screen gives quick access to all programs. Installation of new items has become considerably easier: LhA and LZH archives can be extracted with a simple drag-and-drop, and the Amiga Installer has been upgraded. TCP/IP is enabled by default in the more professional configuration, and can be used to access the internet, and even to run Amiga Explorer from inside the emulation, giving the Windows Desktop access to the contents of Amiga disk image files (ADF and HDF). An Amiga OS 1.3 configuration for running older games, and with the original Boing! bouncing ball demo preinstalled, is also included.

The new Amiga Forever Online Edition has a download size of 6.5 MB (this includes the emulation software for Windows, two Amiga operating systems and the preinstalled programs), costs $29.99, and is ready to run immediately after the download. Upgrades to new versions of the emulation software are free and only involve replacing one file.

FREE SUPPORT AND SOFTWARE FOR EVERYBODY

The Amiga Forever web site has been extended and updated, and now contains even more information not just for Cloanto customers, but for Amiga users in general. The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section is one of the most visited Amiga pages on the web, providing advice and links on topics which include for example how to connect an Amiga and a PC and share a modem for internet access, how to read Amiga floppy disks on a PC, and some considerations for those who believe that emulation will kill the Amiga, rather than make it live forever.

MailBX, a new utility developed by Cloanto to convert Amiga mail archives to Microsoft Mail, Outlook Express and Exchange Server, is available for free download on the Cloanto web site and on Aminet. Cloanto's "biz/cloan" directory on Aminet is one of the Amiga's richest collections of free software coming from a single commercial software house, and is expected to continue to surprise the Amiga community with several new and important items.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Amiga Forever Home Page
http://www.cloanto.com/amiga/forever/

Amiga Forever Online Edition Download
http://www.cloanto.com/amiga/forever/online.html

Email
info@cloanto.com


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