Okay, there are multiple App stores that now exist for the Amiga, and I’d like to compare them all (3 so far). The first one up is the one getting the most publicity so far: AMIStore – the cooperative effort between A-EON (Maker of the AmigaOne x1000 and x5000) and AmigaKit (one of the last, biggest Amiga Online retailers around).

My tests were performed using the OS4.1 version using WinUAE 2.9.0.0b23 and Amiga OS4.1 Classic.

First things first: Check out their introductory preview:

Pretty impressive!

To use AMIStore, you have to register and get an AmiSphere Account. Do that by going to http://amisphere.net/register, which redirects to an a-eon site. You’ll see this form:

Then, download the initial installer here –> http://amistore.net/install/ <–

Running the file that gets downloaded just starts a broader webinstaller:

And then you’ll have a new folder (I installed under the System/Utilities) which has the App icon and a downloads folder:

Starting up the app shows the banner (the graphics garbage line is from my WinUAE environment. I haven’t yet gotten the visuals totally cleaned up).

Then, you are presented with rolling adverts for the items available on the store:

The Category view shows the categories and the current count of entries in each one:

The games category has yet to fill out but already has several entries:

You will have to log in using the amisphere account set up earlier. The login is the amisphere ID (“as” + 6 digits). Then, you’ll see how much you have in pre-purchased credits:

I added a few items to the “bag” (most websites would use the term “cart”) and it showed the updated total (in GBP by default, even though I’d prefer it detect my location and use USD)

Clicking on Checkout will autolaunch a URL to get to the website to finish the checkout. Unfortuantely for me, it started Netsurf:

It showed my total and gave me the option to go to paypal to finish the check out:

Like I said, unfortunately it started Netsurf 3.2, and the javascript support wasn’t up to the standard needed by Paypal. So, I had to shut it down. I did have OWB and Odyssey installed but the default was to use Netsurf. I know there is a setting to change the default browser but I haven’t changed it yet.

I came back to my tests two days later, and logged in and it still showed the items in the bag. I decided to remove CANDI and just go for zTools and I manually copied the URL for checkout from Netsurf to OWB and finished checking out.

When that happened, it started downloading the installer via AMIStore:

The installer started up:

And finally, I had the install folders for zTools available:

My experiences with AMIStore were pretty good for something still in beta-phase. I did experience a little instability but that may have been due to the WinUAE environment more than the app.

The fact that it stored my bag contents between sessions was nice. I would like to be able to use a login other than the amisphere account ID as that is just one more login I have to remember.

Overall, it was a great job and I liked the interface.

I hope to test IndieGo! store next.