I could not agree more. I have always felt the Amiga 3000 was the apex of Commodore producing a true professional workstation computer. Nothing before or since had the total level of commit from Commodore. What really impressed me about the Amiga 3000 era:
-The books/manuals were hardbound, well written, colorful, and looked (and felt) professional.
-AmigaOS 2.0 actually looked good while offering new features above and below the hood.
-Unix! I was at university during this time so I had a 3000 UX (and then a TUX). AMIX was amazing and really impressed people who thought of Commodore as a home/games computer. People's jaws would drop when I would dual boot effortlessly. They were also very cheap Unix boxen compared to others. Many Us offered them to students alongside NeXT/SUN/Apple
-They offered a great professional warranty service. A friend had his 1950 die and Commodore had a new one to him in 24 hours.
-The hardware was really geared for the professional environment with a fast CPU/FPU, 24 bit board for AMIX, flicker fixer, SCSI, etc. I LOVED my three button pregnant mouse BTW.
-Heck, the computer just looked professional.
I remember fellow students and professors who saw Commodore as a niche/games/home computer really being impressed with the Amiga 3000. It earned a lot of respect as an entire package especially with AMIX. The cost was very reasonable for all that it did and Commodore went all out...and it showed.
When the Amiga 4000 came out, I sold my Amiga 3000 and bought one. The world was different by that point (fall of 92) and Commodore was falling behind. AGA offered more colors but was slow. Competitors offered better and faster systems for much less. I thought the 4000 looked cheap. The manuals were cheap and even the mouse seemed cheap. Goodbye, AMIX. I get it, Commodore did not have the money to do the same kind of roll out they did for the Amiga 3000. The world was turning to Windows so the market was becoming smaller for them.
My 4000 (decked out) was put up for sale six months later and I jumped to a PC because of my career.
Please know, I am not trying to criticize the Amiga 4000 or anyone that loves them. However, I think you saw a level of effort put into the Amiga 3000 that did not take place with any of the other Amigas that came out. For a time, it was a true viable competitor in the workstation market.
Good memories! :-)
-P
