Kickstart 4 Show Report and Photos
31/05/2001
Report by Robert Williams
Photos by Sue Barnes and Mick Sutton
Now in its fourth year the Kickstart show has become a regular event in the UK Amiga calendar. This year's show was held on Saturday the 26th of May in a new venue at Banstead, Surrey, just off the M25. The new venue was much bigger than previous years with a spacious entrance lobby, a large hall for commercial exhibitors and smaller rooms for the games competition and usergroups.
Entrance.jpg The entrance to the excellent new venue. |
EntranceHall.jpg The entrance hall with the Kickstart table. |
Food.jpg Plenty of food and drinks were available through out the show. |
Kickstart had a table in the lobby where they were attracting new members, also on this table was a very large (21") monitor which was showing various programs during the day including Mac Emulation and Scala. In the main hall Eyetech had the biggest stand complete with the Amiga One board mounted in one of their Z4 towers populated with PCI cards. Although the A1 was not running it was interesting to see it in the flesh after looking at so many photos on the net. Going round the hall Weird Science had a huge number of CDs at knock-down prices, Amiga Active were selling mags and taking subscriptions, Blittersoft had some hardware and software including IFusion on sale, Forematt Home Computing had their range of utilities and games as well as 100% Amiga magazine, Analogic had a selection of hardware and last but not least KickStart's own KickSoft were selling their range of registered shareware.
In addition to the Amiga vendors there were also two generic suppliers one with a huge range of paper, ink and other printer supplies and the other with generic hardware including scanners and printers. On a slightly negative note I was disappointed to see that apart from the Kicksoft stand (where Ray McCarthy was doing his usual excellent demos and sales pitch) none of the other exhibitors had a single Amiga running to demo hardware or software.
MainHall.jpg Vendors in the main hall, Forematt Home Computing are mid-shot. |
AmigaOne.jpg The AmigaOne on the Eyetech stand. |
AmigaOneDetail.jpg The AmigaOne on the Eyetech stand. |
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BusinessImages.jpg Business Images with their range of papers, inks and other supplies. |
WeirdScience.jpg More CDs than you could shake a sizeable stick at. |
AmigaActive.jpg AmigaActive were just inside the main hall. |
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The usergroups were housed in a small but airy room with big windows along one wall, in addition to SEAL Gloustershire Amiga Group, Amiga Support Association and Amigroups UK had tables along with a couple of individuals. Most groups were selling second hand gear and handing out advice and they all had machines running demoing various software. Of particular interest were two Mediator machines on the GAG stand where you could get help and advice on installing and using this exciting new product. Paul Qureshi on the AmigroupsUK stand brought along the A1200 based in-car MP3 player he is building complete with dashboard LCD display which was very impressive.
UserGroups.jpg The usergroups area was often packed. |
ASA.jpg The Amiga Support Association. |
GAGMediator.jpg GAG offered help and advice with the Mediator PCI card. |
On the SEAL table in the usergroup area we were selling Clubbed magazine. Even though we didn't have a new issue for this show sales went well, this was largely thanks to Haydn and Chris Emmins who manned the stand for most of the day while Mick Sutton and I were busy in the games area.
HaydnSEAL.jpg Haydn Williams promoting SEAL and Clubbed magazine at our table. |
On the big screen in the games area was the ever popular Sensible Soccer tournament organised by the Blackpool Amiga Group who had also brought along several machines which were running other games, I noticed Quake and I think Napalm amongst others. Mick Sutton and I ran the Shogo tournament on our machines which went really well apart from a few crashes. Everyone seemed to be really impressed with the look and speed of the game. The final winner of Shogo was Paul Qureshi who won a hard drive from Analogic and a years subscription to our Clubbed magazine.
Sensi.jpg Sensible Soccer never fails to attract players. |
BlackpoolGames.jpg The Blackpool Amiga Group ran several games. |
Shogo.jpg SEAL's contribution to the games arena went down well. |
Altogether we enjoyed the show and thought the venue was a great improvement over previous years, sadly I think that the attendance was lower than the organisers hoped. This was probably mainly due to the excellent bank holiday weather and possibly to the current market position where new products like the Amiga One have already been announced and extensively previewed on the 'net but are not actually out yet. Anyway thanks to everyone involved at Kickstart for all the effort they put into the show.
There are many more pictures official Kickstart show website.
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If you have any comments or suggestions on this site please EMail robert@seal-amiga.co.uk