CANDI Store

A few days ago I made my first AMIStore purchases, Workbench CANDI and the RadeonHD 2.4 driver.

AMIStore

I'll start with the RadeonHD driver. For me this was an upgrade from the 1.2 driver and I was pleased with the upgrade price which I felt was reasonable, however it was disappointing to find a transaction charge and VAT added at the PayPal checkout. As I understand from what I've read on the forums A-EON are currently looking at how they can incorporate these into the prices shown in AMIStore's 'shopfront'. I can appreciate that this may not be a straight forward task as different countries will have different sales taxes and I would guess PayPal makes these extras easier to manage. In terms of downloading the software AMIStore worked well and was very quick to notice that I had paid for the software through PayPal. It is nice to get such instant gratification without the usual wait for key files by email or CD-ROMs in the post. I can also see myself buying more AmigaOS software now with AMIStore making it so convenient.

In terms of the RadeonHD driver's features there is not much I can say until there is some software out that supports the driver's new features. I'm eagerly awaiting the new version of MPlayer and have fingers crossed for smooth playback of 720p video on the AmigaONE 500.

CANDI drawer

CANDI is a package of Workbench backdrops, the difference being that the CANDI backdrops are animated! This is a first for AmigaOS 4.1 (as far as I am aware) and requires the RadeonHD driver to work. I have made a short video of the backdrops in action so you can get a better idea for yourself, see below or here.

There are four backdrops included, all with Amiga themes and 'LowCPU' variants. I have tried both the regular backdrops and the LowCPU versions and can't say as I could tell the difference really. I've not tested these with a CPU monitor, but I guess the LowCPU versions run at a lower frame rate than the regular ones. Neither seem to have an obvious adverse impact on performance and the animations slow down or sometimes pause when applications are busy. All the backdrops are nice, however my favourite is probably RedLight although it's a shame the 'lasers' aren't animated. It would also be nice to have a few more variations of the backdrops, for instance a version of DefaultAnimated with just the drifting clouds and no logo would be great, as would a simple version of SystemWindow that just had the copper effect.