PRODUCT NAME

   Amiga Forever 4.0

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

   Amiga Emulation software for PC or Mac.

COMPANY INFORMATION

   Cloanto
   Italy

   http://www.cloanto.com

PRICE

   Amiga Forever 4.0 £39.99 
   Amiga Forever Upgrade £24.99 

   I bought my CD for £35 at the Alt-Woa 2001 show.

HARDWARE & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

   PC: Pentium, 16MB RAM, Hi/True color, Windows 9x/NT
   Mac: PowerPC Mac.
   Unix: Linux, Solaris, BSD etc, 8Mb, 486+, X11

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

   PC: AMD 450Mhz, 128MB RAM, 8GB HD,
   ATI Rage 128 Graphics Card.
   17" Monitor
   Windows 98SE

REVIEWER
   
   Peter Hutchison
   pjhutch@blizzard.u-net.com
   http://www.blizzard.u-net.com

DEMO VERSION

WinUAE, DOSUae, MacUAE and Fellow are all free to download from
http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/ but these will not include
any Kickstarts or Workbench images.

COPY PROTECTION

     None

SOFTWARE INSTALLATION

     Software comes on one CD.

     CD automatically runs with autorun window with options to load software
     using different configurations, play the MPEG videos and install the 
     software to your harddisk.

REVIEW

  If you liked the Amiga and sold your Amiga or want to see what the 
fuss is about then this CD will provide everything you need to bring back 
those memories.

Amiga Forever is a compilation by Cloanto of the latest Amiga Emulators 
around including the popular WinUAE and Fellow emulators. It also includes 
all Workbench ADF images from version 1.0 to 3.1 and Kickstarts 1.0 and 
3.1 licenced from Amiga Inc.

Also provided are a full Workbench directory harddisk and Workbench 
hardfile to start using with the Emulator. So, you can copy the files 
to your HD and load straight into Workbench w/o having to find disks, 
make images and then installing them to a hard file.

Lots of Amiga programs are included as well such as Personal Paint 7, 
Directory Opus 5.5, Picasso 96, TurboText, ToolManager, KingCON, AExplorer 
and other utilities.

Installation is very straight forward. I will install from the initial launch
menu and will install all three Emulators: Winuae 0.8.8, Fellow 0.3.5 and
DOSUAE 0.7.5, and includes the roms, workbench ADFs, the configuration files,
and Shared directory with full Workbench and Work with the supplied Amiga
programs! You even get a nice launcher to start up your emulator program.

I use a PC 450Mhz AMD and ATI 128 Rage card and 17" Monitor. The configurations
supplied did not like my monitor and tend to send it to sleep and thus had to
shutdown the emulation or reboot. This is probably due to the 'Full Screen'
option in Winuae which for some reason I cannot use. Cloato ought to look into
way it does this?!

DOCUMENTATION

  Documentation is supplied in text only and HTML although reading some of the
text files from the CD do not displat properly on the PC due to the differences
of using LF characters used on the Amiga and CRs on the PC. Documentation also
comes with the Emulation software although it is not usually straight forward
especially for people not used to using Amigas.
  
  Documentation covers all platforms and covers installation and trouble
shooting some problems, it also covers AmigaOS, the provided Amiga Programs
and Windows Tools. Also included is an Interview with Jay Minor and a copy
of the Amiga Patent document! Alos, Data Sharing between the Amiga and other
platforms is also covered such as MSH, Serial connection and using AExplorer.

	
SUPPORT

	Support is provided via the documentation supplied, the Cloato Amiga
Forever website with a FAQ and via email.

Website: http://www.amigaforever.com/

BUGS

	No major bugs have been found as yet. Any bugs with the Emulation 
software is down to the Emulator authors and updates are available on the
web for more recent versions.

GOOD POINTS

  Amiga Forever includes everything you need to get started with emulation
of the Amiga and a bit extra too and has better support than the the free
emulation pages you can download from the web which have no roms, no disks
and quite poor documentation.

BAD POINTS
	
  The CD is quite expensive but would cost you a lot more to buy seperately.
ROMs are hard to get hold of, disks are difficult to transfer to ADF format
without a real Amiga and if you live outside Europe or the US, getting 
software and support can be very difficult. This CD overcomes these 
difficulties by supplying everything you need in one place and the 
documentation is comprehensive and easy to follow.

ALTERNATIVES

  Amiga Forever Online which is a cut down version of the CD which supplies
the emulation software and 1.3 and 3.1 ROMs and Workbenches and config files.

  If you already have the ROMs and Workbench, then download the Emulators 
from the UAE Home Page will be more suitable for you.

CONCLUSION

  An excellent CD for old Amiga users and new comers to the Amiga scene,
which will save you time and money in the long run and get you up running 
with Amiga Programs and playing games in no time at all!