The news was greeted with a mixture of surprise, confusion and général approval by the industry and Amiga enthusiasts alike. Although Gateway has revealedlittle about its long term plans for the Amiga, a fewfacts are known. Amiga Technologies will be renamed Amiga International and operated as a separate business unit, devei- opingnew products for the Amiga market. Petro Tyschtschenko, the current Président of Amiga Technologies, willstay on in his présent position. According to Tyschtschenko, the company wil! Initially aim to restart production of the A)200 and make it avail- able through conventional retail outlets such as computer shops and department stores rather than relyingsofelyonmailorderschemes. ltappearsthat an Al200 couldbeavailablein the shops for about 698 DM ($ 400 Dollars or E250) or about E360 with hard drive. However, ir) the long term, the motive behind Gateway's bid remains somethrng of a mystery. There is specufation that the purchase will be used to help Amiga bridge out into the US (where sales have traditionally been muchlowerthanin Europe) and boost Gateway's position and réputation in Europe where ithas yettoestablishitself as a household name. Another more excitingpossibilityisthe possibiiitythat Gateway wants to use Amiga to help it develop and refine new technologies. Gateway has recently been experimerttingin the multimédia market with its Destination big screen PC and looks interested in expanding its knowledge inthisfield. Amiga Technologies was one of the first pioneers of multimédia and would be an obvious choice for a company interested in developing new technoio gios. Although Tyschtschenko has denied that Gateway plans to utilise Amiga technology for set top boxes, the traditional strength of the Amiga is that it allows for high performance on modest hardware so the know-how and rntellectua! Property of Amiga might be a very valuable investment for Gateway. It isn't too far fetched to suggest that Gateway could be interested in developing inexpensive, low-end multimédia machines. Reaction on fhe Amiga newsgroups has been overwhelmingly positive. An Amiga Web Directory DejaNews search of current newsgroup messages has indicated that reaction to the announcement has been about 98 per cent positive. Even QuikPak, who made an unsuccessful bid for the company in February, welcomed Gateway's purchase.