I've just taken a look at the Sonnet Crecendo and the shark and they are two different beasts. Apart from that Elbox have the cheapest at $450.00 (around £230.00) but because it's a PCI card if you don't already have a mediator then you have to buy one of them which is a further $310.00 (£165.00). Don't know about you but that's more than a few pounds.
They are not, trust me. Much research has been done elsewhere, they are the same.
Those prices have been there since the product was first announced some years past when the price was that high.
I take you point about the Mediator if you don't have one though.

OS4 is PPC. The court case isn't stopping that. The court case is stopping sales/distribution.
No it isn't. OS4 can be distributed for Classic Amigas with a PPC add on.
OS4 cannot be distributed with any other technology without a license from Amiga Inc.

Yes more programming of ports will be done but only by fans. Basically the same people who are programming the stuff now. We will be getting stuff that is about 5+ years out of date and it will run like a pig as it's just a port and the people doing the port will be the ones with the high end machines.
Already agreed coding will be done within the community.
Why five years out of date?
Apart from Skype, Amigas can do pretty much anything Windoze machines do.
(Although how long that situation will last depends on the issues we are discussing).
Why all ports, when that isn't the case now?
Don't forget we are basing this discussion on cheap upgrades or machines.
We will all be high end. (Well to a degree, we will be all at a similar level)

But as i said at the start it won't be cheap to upgrade and as OS4 is little more than a slightly faster graphical update to 3.5 why bother?
You don't know that it will be and I have seen the figures that it prove it can be.
(Althought that doesn't mean it will be.)
I'ts not just a slightly faster graphical update, it's an OS for faster hardware.
Hardware that's still in development more to the point.

They are two different beasts doing a similar thing you may as well try to get M$ and Apple to cooperate more as they both use Intel.
Not the same, as I have already said, coders are currently producing for both or even all the Amiga OSes and it's derivatives now.

So why call out for new hardware that will deliver very little benefits and empty a huge hole in the pockets of said fanboys. (And this goes for all options of CPU).
Why very little benefits?
Why upgrade anything be it car, computer, games console or household appliance?
As already stated doesn't have to be a huge hole.

I think that what we should be doing is what people are doing with some of the 8bit machines. Exploring the potential of existing hardware and getting the most out of it and get out of this PC frame of mind of asking for "More Power!!!" People said you couldn't do Doom on an Amiga let alone a Spectrum yet they are there and the Spectrum doesn't have any CPU upgrades.
I agree upto a point.
You should always be looking to do the most with the least.
That makes good economical and environmental sense.

But at the end of the day, you can't fit a pint into a half pint glass.
(Trust me, look at my kitchen floor.)