If the independent retailers were 'the Indians' in the retail market of 1995, then there can be no doubt that Escom themselves were 'the cowboys' - in every sense of the word. The Amiga Magic Pack, for instance, included bundled software (SCALA) that wouldn't even run on the machine unless an additional 2Mb of memory was installed. Also, a cost-cutting exercise on the floppy drive (the Amiga's original DD drive had been replaced with an altered HD drive) resulted in piles of existing software not running on the 'new' machine. This was blamed on developers using "illegal software practices", according to Jonathan Anderson of Amiga Technologies, which meant that most publishers who had taken the trouble to protect their software were rewarded with it not loading at all due to the bodged floppy mechanism.

Further similarities between Escom and the citizens of the wild, wild west were everywhere and you didn't have to look very hard to spot them: customers complained of buying machines whose insides didn't match the specifications they'd ordered; software was installed on machines but no discs were provided; boxes of floppy disks which came with files already nestling snugly within their shutters were sold over the counter...

Eventually, of course, the whole Escom edifice came tumbling down the following year, much to the relief of everyone who was trying to earn an honest living in the computer industry. As a company, Escom were greedy, uncaring, ignorant, arrogant and just plain stupid, which makes me wonder why they compared themselves to Americans...