But after 5 minutes of using it, I was like DAMN! this sucker is responsive as all hell.
Well to be honest, I used to get that impression with my A4000 w/CSMkIII-060 + UWSCSI harddrive and Cybervision 64/3D. But compared to my G3 Pegasos + MOS it just seems soooo sluggish now. :-D [The clincher was loading up quake, I think it took a grand total of 2 seconds for it to load. ]
SO then I loaded up the apps. Web browsers, DTPs, worpros, spreadsheets.
What I noticed was that it wasn't the machine or OS that was bad, but the Apps that SUCKED!!!!!
Which versions and which apps sucked? Not many of them have been updated in a good long time. FroggerNG [yes, can finally watch DivX, QuickTime and other movie files on an Amiga-ish system], IBrowse 2.3, MIami, Yam do pretty much of my day to day things. (Even my on-line banking.
) I really just need a good JAVA implementation and working video-capture/edit software and I'd be all set.
Now I read the threads that after all the development on AOS 4, the best I can get is a PPC "feeling" like a fast '060. Well I have that, so what's the exercise for?
Well, that's a fast 060 on a Amiga4000 with CyberstormPPC running a relatively "slow" PPC. The exercise is to eventually decouple the AmigaOS from the older Amiga hardware and bring it up to a more modern level. In the case of OS4, the AmigaOne.
If I can try and transpose how an 060 based A4000 running OS3.9 feels compared to a G3-600 Pegasos system. Then I'm positive that OS4 + AmigaOne should give you at the very least a similar quantum leap.
Now with that said, is it the transition to PPC that is necessary to get good apps, was the OS the problem, and can the apps have been improved with just a new OS?
I think the main problem is hardware. As far as I know, no one is building anymore AGA chips, no one is assembling any more Amiga systems and hardly anyone service these systems. The amiga market is shrinking, not expanding. And lack of horsepower isn't helping matters. You want to play mp3's while browsing? Oh, you want to watch this cool DivX film online? You want to run an emulator?
Add on top of that the cost to upgrade classic hardware. I look at the Zorro cards I've got and for a time I was considering scrapping them all and getting a Mediator to switch to PCI.
Now the REAL million dollar question that begs is, does the AOS 4 and PPC upgrade really finally spell the true end of the current Amigas, or will people continue to support the older stuff once the new comes out.
Well, it's quite possible. There is a market for WinUAE users. I use WinUAE on my laptop so I can work on things online. Amithlon users are there as well. Not to mention Pegasos + MOS users as well. The one common denomicator between OS4, UAE, Amithlon, MOS is OS3.x 68k binaries. (Also note that AROS is compatible with OS3.x source code.)
Hardware-wise, I can see classic amiga hardware getting less and less upgrade options without making the jump to PCI.
