Does anyone here solely use a Classic Amiga?

[amigasociety]

I think if you change some expectations of what your computing needs are, any old platform, even from the early 80s can be quite usable for many things.  I am a professional IT person so my needs to access clients systems remotely can't be done with systems of old but not everyone is an IT person.  

So, I guess one has to ask themselves, what do they need in a computer and maybe can they get by with losing some computing capabilities they have grown use to in the 2000s.  

I know this is not purely Amiga based, but I do have an Amiga 1000 as part of my "being used" collection of aged technology and as of now, I am on kind of a adventure of seeing what can be done with old tech and what can I "become AMISH" about and leave by the wayside as part of my new computing life.

Here is what I am doing..... For business purposes my newest machine is a 2.5 year old Macbook Air that is used daily as my business system.  I have my own company and need to remote into Mac clients systems on a daily basis so need at least a OS X capable machine to do that.  So, I get by with a 2.5 year old machine to run my business.  From there, all is veteran equipment that believe it or not, I use all these systems weekly for either enjoyment ot actual tasks.  

I think just having one old Amiga would be tuff for sure but how about using the Amiga for word processing, games, database tasks, and fun old programming.  If you need web and email, heck, phones these days can do that and technically, they are not a desktop computer so you can say the only computer you use is an Amiga.  :hammer:  Then use say an iPhone great email and decent web browsing that can handle Paypal, eBay, some banking, etc...

As for me, I am using a BeBox Dual 133MHz today for playing CDs and listening to great tunes to end my day.  Then I will sparkup my NeXTcube and can do some GREAT Desktop Publishing and I can even do email and basic web browsing from this old 68040 at 33MHz in NeXTSTEP.  Some great old apps on a NeXT.  Then I spark up my Atari 800 and play some great old games and end the day playing with my Amiga 1000 and some cool old apps.

In a nutshell, find a use for ALL your old equipment and not just let them rot in the box to say you own X number of Amigas.  I like collectors but collectors that actually use what they own.  Use it or Loose it.  :laughing:  Old tech dies if they sit in the box.

So, modify your expectations of what you need a computer for, find a alternative for what it can't do, and enjoy what you have.  I could be happy with an Amiga and an iPhone I am sure if that is all God let me play with.

tj

[Crumb]

I used my A4000T in a hardcore way until 2003, then I had to move outside of my city to work and had to get a peecee laptop :-( Nowadays I use MorphOS as main machine, Amigas 68k for demoscene/coding/retro things. Sometimes I turn on my old laptop if there's something I can't do with my miggies but it's collecting dust lately.

[DBAlex]

I think if you change some expectations of what your computing needs are, any old platform, even from the early 80s can be quite usable for many things.  I am a professional IT person so my needs to access clients systems remotely can't be done with systems of old but not everyone is an IT person.  

So, I guess one has to ask themselves, what do they need in a computer and maybe can they get by with losing some computing capabilities they have grown use to in the 2000s.  

I know this is not purely Amiga based, but I do have an Amiga 1000 as part of my "being used" collection of aged technology and as of now, I am on kind of a adventure of seeing what can be done with old tech and what can I "become AMISH" about and leave by the wayside as part of my new computing life.

Here is what I am doing..... For business purposes my newest machine is a 2.5 year old Macbook Air that is used daily as my business system.  I have my own company and need to remote into Mac clients systems on a daily basis so need at least a OS X capable machine to do that.  So, I get by with a 2.5 year old machine to run my business.  From there, all is veteran equipment that believe it or not, I use all these systems weekly for either enjoyment ot actual tasks.  

I think just having one old Amiga would be tuff for sure but how about using the Amiga for word processing, games, database tasks, and fun old programming.  If you need web and email, heck, phones these days can do that and technically, they are not a desktop computer so you can say the only computer you use is an Amiga.  :hammer:  Then use say an iPhone great email and decent web browsing that can handle Paypal, eBay, some banking, etc...

As for me, I am using a BeBox Dual 133MHz today for playing CDs and listening to great tunes to end my day.  Then I will sparkup my NeXTcube and can do some GREAT Desktop Publishing and I can even do email and basic web browsing from this old 68040 at 33MHz in NeXTSTEP.  Some great old apps on a NeXT.  Then I spark up my Atari 800 and play some great old games and end the day playing with my Amiga 1000 and some cool old apps.

In a nutshell, find a use for ALL your old equipment and not just let them rot in the box to say you own X number of Amigas.  I like collectors but collectors that actually use what they own.  Use it or Loose it.  :laughing:  Old tech dies if they sit in the box.

So, modify your expectations of what you need a computer for, find a alternative for what it can't do, and enjoy what you have.  I could be happy with an Amiga and an iPhone I am sure if that is all God let me play with.

tj

Very true about the iPhone... I have an iPod Touch and you could easily use it as your only web browser/email machine... iPhone is better of course due to 3G, but the iPod Touch is still very cool! Can't wait for the iOS4 upgrade! :-D

[Gulliver]

I used exclusively Amigas until 1995, and then when the Internet arrived massively to my country, it basicly killed my Amiga monopoly

Till this day, Amigas have been great gaming, graphics, and sound machines for me. But the Amiga biggest flaw, has always been Internet support, and that was a point of no return for me. I love and use all my Amigas, but they all do suck at the web.

[amigasociety]

I used exclusively Amigas until 1995, and then when the Internet arrived massively to my country, it basicly killed my Amiga monopoly

Till this day, Amigas have been great gaming, graphics, and sound machines for me. But the Amiga biggest flaw, has always been Internet support, and that was a point of no return for me. I love and use all my Amigas, but they all do suck at the web.

I think most non mac, windows,and maybe linux web capabilities are subpar. Tj

[varmfskii]

Amigas were my primary machines up until 2003.

I have to admit that I never did all my computing on Amigas.  I still used the machines I had before.

[Tenacious]

I held on for a long time.  Oddly enough, it was Yahoo (when they "modernized" My Yahoo a few years back) that forced me to rely upon other platforms more.  Until then, I struggled with PDFs, printing of many kinds of documents, lived without Utube and flash.  Ppl would email enormous pics and video that were hard to play.

I still use Amigas for many things.  I trust AmigaOS more than any other OS.  I know it better.  It is still a living, fascinating thing that speaks to my imagination.  

Other OSes belong to the corporations that created them.  I use them because they forced newer standards that all the rest of the world adopted.  It's tough to be an island.  Grin.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I packed mine away in 2000 after I got cable internet and an Athlon 1.4Ghz. The Amiga was embarrisingly limited about that time and the future of PPC Amiga looked pretty gloomy.
Now that the Ghz war has settled down and Aros is finished I can see myself using an Amiga as a home theatre/net surfing/mp3 jukebox/retro gaming system.

[runequester]

the internet is the big limiter, but as someone has pointed out, these days with stuff like iphone, evo and other smart phones, peecees are almost being superceded anyways

[XDelusion]

I did up till the end of the 90's, then I slowly made the shift to Windows 95, and began to examine a plethora of other Operating Systems, my main love of them being BeOS otherwise known as Haiku now a days.

Though, in spirit of the Amiga, I am planning on buying a eMac this week's end or next, in order that I may register MorphOS, hopefully at discount prices.

There is NO WAY I could do half the things I do now a days on a classic Amiga, though a HUGE CHUNK of that can be accomplished on an eMac from the sound of things, so I'd pretty much only have to resort to Windows for Advanced Video Editing, and DOOM Editing via DOOM Builder.

Eventually I will replace Windows with ReactOS, or another OS running Wine (hopefully not Linux), likewise I will always have an x86 machine around to run Haiku, and another for the sake of AROS.

Oh, and let's not forget my heavily modified Atari 8-Bit computers, with CF Hard Drives, expanded ram, audio, and soon video.

I believe this pretty much the nature of the beast for all present day Amiga users. None of us own but one computer anymore, and it seems a lot of us love to explore the various OS's available out there, Amiga or not.

[Thorham]

Did that until 2005 when I got a Pentium 3 for free. Never had many problems with it. Also, I know a guy on another forum who still does, and who doesn't want a peecee at home, because he hates the things

[XDelusion]

Much respect to him for standing his ground!

[aggro_mix]

I think I got my first PC in 97 or 98, up until then I mostly used my A3000 but without a graphics card browsing the web was a bit limiting even in those days.

I still had the A3000 as main computer probably until 2002

[slayer]

I don't know why you have to put classic in there?

As far as I know classic is just a term others give to cpu they think are no use anymore, I've only ever used an Amiga so why would I consider it classic lol... I used my A4000 right up until they brought out a SAM (not that long ago really)... now I have 2 SAMs... and I'll probably own 2 x X1000s sooner than most of you think...

I've always used AmigaOS and AmigaHW since 1986 and nothing else...

I will never own anything but an Amiga running legitimate AmigaOS... even if they stopped today and never released anything else... my SAMs and any 2nd hand SAMs would be all I'd need...

As far as I know I am the only one left in this category... heh

[Castellen]

Just wondered if anyone here *only* uses their Classic Amiga for all computing and nothing else..

Yep, this A4000T/060 does all my work; personal and business.  I have an A3000/060 as a backup machine, although that rarely gets used as the A4k has never given any trouble.

I think it would be kinda hard to keep up with most things... I think you'd have to have a PC/Mac/Linux to do some basic stuff like online banking etc...

Not really, IBrowse works fine with both of my banks for online banking.  Not being able to view crap on YouTube is a benefit; if I had time to waste watching gay little internet videos, I'd sooner watch TV instead.  Not to mention the fact that common internet adware and viruses are rarely a problem.  No secret that Amiga viruses don't pop up much anymore.

If you do what problems do you have? How do you solve them?

My only real issue is that Ghostscript is a bit painful for lots of PDF viewing and aPDF only views older version PDFs.

There's a few specific things I've needed to do over the years that the Amiga couldn't, but also couldn't easily be done with other platforms either.  So I've written various bits of software to do things, and developed various bits of hardware as well, including an EPROM programmer and various modems/interfaces for commercial radio communications work and embedded application development.

The machine runs 24/7, everyday uses include:
- Webserver (MiamiDX, ARexx webserver with scripting, plus some of my own server software) http://amiga.serveftp.net
- Local file and print server (Samba)
- FTP server (RC-FTPd)
- Remote client work (TwinVNC and some Telnet app from Aminet)
- Document publication and technical report writing (PageStream, FW97, Ghostscript for PDF generation)
- Document scanning (fxScan)
- Timesheet, job management, equipment records, misc spreadsheet work (TurboCalc)
- Email (YAM)
- Web access (IBrowse)
- Image generation and editing (TV Paint and Perfect Paint)
- Image effects (Candy Factory)
- HTML generation (Cubic IDE)
- Amiga software development, C and ARexx (Cubic IDE, SAS/C)
- Embedded software development, C and assembly (Cubic IDE, Term and scipts for compiling under DOS via PC-Task)
- A bit of audio editing (Samplitude Opus)
- CD writing (MakeCD)
- A bit of video editing (MovieShop + VLab motion)
- Audio playback (Songplayer and many others)
- Business fax and voicemail (STfax)
- various other things I can't remember right now

Works fine for me, can't see things changing any time soon.  I guess the main sticking points are the reliability, flexibilty and ease of use.

[bloodline]

My father stuck it out with an A600 and noninternet until October last year... Then I gve him an old PowerBook G4 an a broadband connection...