KennyR wrote:
Ok, topic has gone waaaaay OT, so this'll be my last post here.
That's a pity. You touched on something I like to discuss periodically, below. Well, maybe you'll rethink and reply after reading this post.
My PC hardware isn't impressive: the HD is probably 'generic' UDMA and I only have 128MB of RAM, of which kind I have no idea, but it's a DIMM. The 'low' amount of RAM is probably the reason why its so painfully slow. I mean it. It gives me migraines just remembering it. I avoid that computer like the plague. :-(
$15 USD would fix that problem for you. And about five to ten minutes tweaking things. I hate to sound snippy, but please don't come back with a reply about "having to tweak things" - I break out in a cold sweat when I think about the poor bastards trying to keep towerized A1200's with a ####load of "dangly bits" hacked on, and library after library added on, and other hardware leeching VRAM from 3d cards to work properly...the list could go on.
So if you can spend 10=15 minutes getting an Amiga "working right", you could do the same to remedy your PC issues.
But...Windows XP is slow, even comparing it against other versions of Windows. It has gained notoriety for it, even to the point where it gets slower with every 'hotfix' update. Couple this with the fact that VM thrashes constantly from power on to power off on my PC, and I have a system that is so unusably slow that even my family complain about it.
You
just said you were using substandard hardware you didn't want to be bothered working on, upgrading, or troubleshooting. Who's fault is the slowness? Further, did it occur to you that you
can turn off the alpha blending and other things in XP to make it visually identical to 2000? Or even '95? This speeds it up greatly - and again, takes but a few minutes.
It's not Microsoft's fault for assuming you've got a reasonably fast computer. I realize the Amiga mindset is to cling to the low-end standard as long as possible to squeeze as much performance out of the hardware, but the days when that was necessary are (thankfully!) long, long gone. I mean, I didn't try to run OS3.0 at 640x480x128 on my unexpanded A1200 (Well, I did
once to see what it would look like - very pretty, and far, far too SLOW!). I ran it at a lower resolution and color depth. I
tweaked it so it ran as well as could be expected on the platform I had...
And it's partly my Amiga and Pegasos's fault, really. They've really eroded my patience. They are so responsive and fast that I just don't realise what kind of sluggishness Windows, Mac and Linux users put up with on a daily basis.
Here's another "amiga thing" I never understood, even when I owned and actively used an Amiga: "The OS! It's great! Look at that window! Look at that menu! Bang! Opens right up! Boom! Closes right down!"
By that standard, GEOS on my C64 was about a million times better than anything the Amiga had going - except, of course, it wasn't.
Why?
Because
the software wasn't there. I don't "use" an OS. There are features of various OS's that get use from me, yes. Sometimes Calc comes in handy. Every once in a blue moon I'll open the shell to do some Q&D TCPIP work - but beyond being a place from which I
launch applications, the OS is, quite frankly, meaningless.
That's why I've never "gone Mac" or "gone (back to the) Amiga". The apps aren't there. They just Are Not. Internet Explorer and other browsers are the programs: The OS is merely the thing they sit upon. An OS neither robs my pocket nor fills it.
If DOS was
still the rule of the day*, I'd be using it if that's where all the apps were. If the Amiga was still a viable contender (that is, stronger than the Mac in the computer market in the 'States and at least as strong as the PC), I'd use
it - because the applications would be there.
But that's not the case. It wasn't when the Amiga was "huge" here - unless you were big in to Video Editing.
They're used to it, I'm not. I guess most people here have never used a really fast Amiga, (currently only the Pegasos or Amithlon box, in my experience UAE doesn't qualify, sorry UAE users).
Steve G.? Is that you? (No, wait, you didn't call for the immediate arrest of Bernd Meyer, nor did you post foul language from an anon reposter, so I don't guess it is S.G. :lol:)
I, for one,
have used a "Fast" Amiga. Had one. Sold it, bought a PC. For the day, my 28mhz/030 Amiga was damn fast. PPC cards were a gleam in H&Ps eye, and DCE was still a trustworthy company. 030/28/2mb chip/4mb Fast, 60mb HD.
Not the fast
est, but a contender in Amiga terms in 1993.
But ultimately, it will be what's available for the AmigaOne when or if it
plus AmigaOS for the A1 materialize that determines whether or not I'll come back to the Amiga platform. Despite the delusions of some folks (not you, just some!) neither the PC standard nor Microsoft are going away any time soon, so an A1 purchase would be
in addition to the stuff I already have. The A1 would become part of the big happy family of computer gear I have!
Providing there was something I could do with it.. Playing with the OS and going "Oooh! This boots/moves windows/opens menus so much faster than XP!" doesn't constitute "something I could do".
Footnote:
*No matter how hard some
other deluded fools wish it, DOS has nothing to do with XP, 2000 or NT of any flavor. Nada.
