Maybe us RISC OS enthusiasts and users should face the music - the RISC OS desktop computer market is DEAD!

Just some of the heads around it.

seriously, how can you say that with Omega, Slym, green portables, Oregano 2, Vantage, conversion utilities, etc. springing up everywhere?

We don't all need Active Directories, Smart Tags and Son-of-the-Evil-Paperclip-Returns-Episode-IV.

Do I detect a windup?

Because I prefer RISC OS to any other operating system I've seen over the last decade, and I'm prepared to stick with it if I think that it is going to continue to be developed. I admit that what I said was a very rash statement and is my worst fear!

You're not the only one to feel like that. I've had many a conversation on the same topic with people in the market - some of whom have done a lot for the market but are getting very hacked off putting the effort in when the guys at the top seem intent on wiping us out.

I do agree with your comments about Techwriter. I've had to use word in some lectures at university - but I'm glad to say that I rarely have to use it. Producing complex assignments involing lots of diagrams and equations is much easier in techwriter than in word. RISC OS seems to lack CD ROMs such as Encarta, and decent games. If RISC OS is going to appeal to new markets then this needs to be rectified.

You'll never see PC / Console quality games on RISC OS unless there's a huge take up of XScale STBs or something (assuming 32bit RISC OS of course). Apart from taking ages to write, they offer very, very little return - certainly nothing more than enough to say a few copies have been solved. Also, with the exception of the Starfighter update (and the high cost of 4Ds upgrades / patches) they've one unit wonders - not like Easiwriter, or Ovation which can generate a constant revenue stream through upgrades and the like.

I'm studying electronic engineering and need complex design software as part of the course such as OrCAD. I'm not aware of electronics package availiable for RISC OS apart fromRISC PCB which does not meet all of my needs.

Have you tried suggesting new features to the author?

I have stuck with Acorn/RiscOS because I had faith in the platform and it met all of my computing needs. In addition I have always found the majority of the Acorn Community helpful .This was my position until recently. These days I get increasingly frustrated especially with Web browsing. I have all the packages and only Oregano gives a reasonable performance, even this will not handle the majority of sites that I access due to Java or javascript errors. Voyager from my experience has become virtually unusable except for simple sites. If Microdigital ever market a fast machine then with a few exceptions we will have a racing car on a single track road with some of the present software. With respect to the PC I shall be buying one soon, this is a decision not taken lightly in view of the investment in RiscOS, but one must keep up with the times and only the PC offers an economic route. As a user of WindowsNT at work I have not had to many problem except making tea which the machine boots up.

I have. I was told that there will be an update soon - but it hasn't appeared yet. Someone is writing a schematics program to go with it but it needs a LOT of work.

I'm prepared to stick with RISC OS for the next few years simply so that I can use Techwriter if nothing else. But it pains me a lot to say this but I do think the RISC OS market is slowly folding, ISv recently pulled out of the market and Icon Technology are porting Techwriter to the Mac. I'm afraid that it is things like this which are not helping my confidence in the market.

I have. I was told that there will be an update soon - but it hasn't appeared yet. Someone is writing a schematics program to go with it but it needs a LOT of work.

On a positive note at least you got a reply.

I'm prepared to stick with RISC OS for the next few years simply so that I can use Techwriter if nothing else. But it pains me a lot to say this but I do think the RISC OS market is slowly folding, ISv recently pulled out of the market and Icon Technology are porting Techwriter to the Mac. I'm afraid that it is things like this which are not helping my confidence in the market.

It's worth pointing out that Icon Technology are porting back to the Mac (Easiwriter was originally based on MacAuthor I think) but this doesn't mean we'll lose the RISC OS version.

At this point people will point out Sibelius, Artworks and others but the point about Easiwriter is that the development is happening in parallel in portable C++ whereas the others were originally written in ARM code which made maintenance expensive. For the Easiwriter series the only area that will require work will be controlling the user interface.

As for ISV, well after having spoken to Aaron at Wakefield the announcement didn't come as a huge shock - sad as it was.

Have you tried suggesting new features to the author?

I have. I was told that there will be an update soon - but it hasn't appeared yet. Someone is writing a schematics program to go with it but it needs a LOT of work.

iSV clearly explained their reasons so that example does not reflect on the market as a whole as it was seemingly just a unique case.

[Edited by andrew at 16:28, 24/7/2001]

I seem to have missed iSV's reasons for pulling out of the RISC OS market. Could someone fill me in on this please?

Basically the official reason is that running iSV became too much for Aaron so he has passed some of the iSV products over to APDL. Instead Aaron is going to concentrate on Windows software.

On a positive note, does anyone else think APDL are doing an amazing job at picking up the pieces?

I seem to have missed iSV's reasons for pulling out of the RISC OS market. Could someone fill me in on this please?

Basically the official reason is that running iSV became too much for Aaron so he has passed some of the iSV products over to APDL. Instead Aaron is going to concentrate on Windows software.

This is not totally true. Aaron (isv) found that too much of his time was spent on the phone so basically he still writes RO software and updates to DrawWorks etc BUT APDL do the publishing. He has not stopped RO support or upgrades.

It wasn't for the reason I had assumed. I thought iSV decided that the RISC OS market was unviable - I'm obviously wrong.

Maybe we'll all be in for a pleasn't supprise - and RISC OS will take off again!

It's all very well RISC OS Ltd updating RISC OS and manufacturers producing fast ARM based computers to run RISC OS. But there is very little decent software that is able to compete with anything on the PC and Mac platforms.

I don't totally agree. Without wishing to sound overly optimistic I'd say there is nothing on other platforms that touches the Easi/TechWriter family (although the Mac port will change this). Yes Word is powerful but it's useless for producing a document as involved as a thesis. I speak from watching the pain of my colleagues trying it on monster PCs when, until recently, my A4000 was coping admirably.

It's also fair to say that you have to spend a lot of money on the Mac or PC to get access to some of the technology in Vantage.

Many people claim that email clients such as Pluto and Messenger Pro are better than their PC counterparts. I've not got experience of either so I can't comment. I also don't think the browser situation is as bad as people make out. A lot of the problem comes down to poor HTML generation in the MS tools. This means IE is much less strict than it should be when it comes to implementing the W3C guidelines. Also if people think Oregano is bad then I dare you to try Netscape 6 for truly awful piece of software (so bad the last time I tried there were icons and menus missing from the toolbar).

There is no real way around these problems past people yammering at organisations telling them they can't get on their sites. I made it clear to one2one that I'd gone with Orange partially because I couldn't get on their website (with Netscape 6 would you believe?). I never got a reply though funnily enough.

However there are problems - one being the lack of an Excel compatible spreadsheet. The latest developments from Clares partially overcome this. What I can't understand are the people saying "oh just port Gnumeric" as if it's easy. Surely if Gnumeric is open source and can load Excel spreadsheets then all the RISC OS developers have to do is take a look at the source to see how it's done?

We also lack in areas such as RealAudio. Personally I'm not bothered by this - I don't think much of the RealAudio software but that's not to say it can't be done - in fact IIRC it has been done but the licensing fees are extortionate.

I'd really like to see an uptodate Java VM - the sheer amount of quality Java software out there now is incredible - take a wander around www.javasoft.com or www.sourceforge.net and check it out. There are editors, server software, browsers, XML parsers etc etc. The JVM in itself could solve a lot of problems.

Maybe us RISC OS enthusiasts and users should face the music - the RISC OS desktop computer market is DEAD!

If you really believe that why are you reading this website?

Because I prefer RISC OS to any other operating system I've seen over the last decade, and I'm prepared to stick with it if I think that it is going to continue to be developed. I admit that what I said was a very rash statement and is my worst fear!

I do agree with your comments about Techwriter. I've had to use word in some lectures at university - but I'm glad to say that I rarely have to use it. Producing complex assignments involing lots of diagrams and equations is much easier in techwriter than in word. RISC OS seems to lack CD ROMs such as Encarta, and decent games. If RISC OS is going to appeal to new markets then this needs to be rectified.

I'm studying electronic engineering and need complex design software as part of the course such as OrCAD. I'm not aware of electronics package availiable for RISC OS apart fromRISC PCB which does not meet all of my needs.

As a user of WindowsNT at work I have not had to many problem except making tea which the machine boots up.

I've found that HD performance makes a huge difference to start up time with Windows. I just stuck an IBM deskstar in my WinME machine and the startup time dropped from a minute 20secs to 40secs. Of course, add a new, large HD to a RISC OS machine and startup time _increases_

I don't think there's anything wrong with using two machines. That's the way we'll have to go. But just because you have a Win PC, doesn't mean you need to stop using your RISC OS machine, or stop supporting the platform. I use my Win PC for games and some compatibility things (some webbrowsing, dealing with excel files etc). That's all it's good for. My RPC is better at every other computing task I do.

But a monthly sub to the online Enc. Brit. is cheap ... and it's always the most up-to-date edition (and works with Oregano and even Fresco).

David