Amiga US goes silent – has Gateway shut it down?

Gateway may have finally pulled the plug on its Amiga subsidiary -- at least in its US incarnation -- if attempts by members of the Amiga user community to contact the company are anything to go by. According to Amiga community members, all attempts to contact the Amiga, inc. have been repelled, usually with "this number has been disconnected or is no longer in service" messages. Calls to Amiga staff made via Gateway have apparently also proved unsuccessful. According to one source, even Amiga Germany VP Petro Tyschtschenko has found it impossible to contact his peers in the US. And Amiga's own Web site no longer lists US members of staff or gives their contact details -- only general office locations. At this stage, we're trying to get confirmation of the claims, so concerned Amiga users should not necessarily assume the worst. The problems could easily be the result of a glitch with the company's phone system, for example. That said, so frequent have been the upheavals the company has experienced over the last three or four months -- the loss of president Jim Collas, the decision to abandon its hardware development plans, the shift to a software-only strategy, Gateway's own decision to adopt Cobalt kit for non-PC products -- that closure certainly can't be ruled out. As we receive more information, we'll keep you posted. ®