FYI, I do not refuse to use anything other than an Amiga. At work, I (have) used PC's, Mac', VAX-es (VMS), SUN's (UNIX) and Silicon Graphics (UNIX). For home, I like my Amiga best. This is an informed decision. All I have seen happening in the PC world is that the lousy interface has got progressively more like Amiga OS and therefore more useable. But at a cost: a new machine every 2 years. Sure, you can still use a 286, but that means you have to use MS-DOS!! There is this vicious circle of new HW leading to new SW which needs new HW and so on and on... the only ones laughing are the vendors. And for the day to day SW, this is all totally unnecessary: at work I use Word V6 and it is stuffed full of tons of unnecessary options which only make life complicated. The (upgraded) A2000 does it all: word processing, spreadsheets, MIDI sequencing (Bars & Pipes Pro free from Blue Ribbon!), 24 bit drawing (TVPaint free from Newtek!), Internet access, you name it. All with a beautiful, friendly interface (Directory Opus free, now OS). Since I am not interested in the latest shootup games, I reckon I miss little. 40 Mhz and still going strong:) But, show me a new, modern Amiga with similar features as the old (sleek, efficient, friendly, with a huge creative user base) and I will probably jump - as long as I can take some of my old SW with me (at least for a transition period). After all, it IS fun to buy a new computer if it is miles ahead on anything else, just like the original Amiga was in it's time.
The salesman in 1992 advised me to buy a 286... I went my own way, got an Amiga 2000 for the same money, and am still using it. Over time it has been upgraded with a new OS version, HDD, accelerator (68040/40), CD-ROM, Picasso IV Graphics Card, 32 Mb RAM, Fast Serial/Parallel Interface, Modem. These upgrades have cost me something like £ 900 in total. This gradual approach has meant that I could keep up with new SW as it came out. My yearly computing costs amount to £100, and all that time I have had a good, functional machine which does what I want at acceptable speed (and most of it all at the same time). Had I bought a 286 in 1992, I would have needed a 386 in 1994, a 486 in 1996, a Pentium in 1998 and a PIII in 2000. Total cost would have been something like £ 4000 or more. Is this Amiga dead or alive, or what?
FYI, I do not refuse to use anything other than an Amiga. At work, I (have) used PC's, Mac', VAX-es (VMS), SUN's (UNIX) and Silicon Graphics (UNIX). For home, I like my Amiga best. This is an informed decision. All I have seen happening in the PC world is that the lousy interface has got progressively more like Amiga OS and therefore more useable. But at a cost: a new machine every 2 years. Sure, you can still use a 286, but that means you have to use MS-DOS!! There is this vicious circle of new HW leading to new SW which needs new HW and so on and on... the only ones laughing are the vendors. And for the day to day SW, this is all totally unnecessary: at work I use Word V6 and it is stuffed full of tons of unnecessary options which only make life complicated. The (upgraded) A2000 does it all: word processing, spreadsheets, MIDI sequencing (Bars & Pipes Pro free from Blue Ribbon!), 24 bit drawing (TVPaint free from Newtek!), Internet access, you name it. All with a beautiful, friendly interface (Directory Opus free, now OS). Since I am not interested in the latest shootup games, I reckon I miss little. 40 Mhz and still going strong :) But, show me a new, modern Amiga with similar features as the old (sleek, efficient, friendly, with a huge creative user base) and I will probably jump - as long as I can take some of my old SW with me (at least for a transition period). After all, it IS fun to buy a new computer if it is miles ahead on anything else, just like the original Amiga was in it's time.
The salesman in 1992 advised me to buy a 286... I went my own way, got an Amiga 2000 for the same money, and am still using it. Over time it has been upgraded with a new OS version, HDD, accelerator (68040/40), CD-ROM, Picasso IV Graphics Card, 32 Mb RAM, Fast Serial/Parallel Interface, Modem. These upgrades have cost me something like £ 900 in total. This gradual approach has meant that I could keep up with new SW as it came out. My yearly computing costs amount to £100, and all that time I have had a good, functional machine which does what I want at acceptable speed (and most of it all at the same time). Had I bought a 286 in 1992, I would have needed a 386 in 1994, a 486 in 1996, a Pentium in 1998 and a PIII in 2000. Total cost would have been something like £ 4000 or more. Is this Amiga dead or alive, or what?