Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Edpon on August 19, 2005, 04:42:54 PM
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Yes, I'm asking this tough question. I mean, back in "classic" Amiga days is was a clear cut answer; because of the great graphics, games, and many features it had over the PC. Nowadays, that's not the case. The motherboards are ridiculous in price, and I don't really see to much software support for it. So the question stands; What is Amiga's current role in the world of today's high powered, vastly faster and much more graphical computer systems? ( Mind you, I'm NOT blasting the Amiga at all, I still like it a lot, I'm just wonder what's the deal with it lately )
Thanks.
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In my case, hobby. It's fun to tinker and play around with hardware, different Amiga models and accelerator/expansion cards, and configuring all of that within the OS. Classic gaming is also a big part of the overall fun factor.
As far as competing with the current standards and generally the technology that's available out there...Amiga is far behind and overpriced, but it's still fun to use it and play around with, if anything just for sheer kicks, no matter what.
My 2 cents. :-)
EDIT: The biggest problem with modern Amiga is the lack of software however. It lacks applications that we all require for daily use. A good example of a lacking application would be a decent web-browser.
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There's only one 80s wedge worth mentioning:
(http://www.allcarpictures.com/pictures/subaru/xt4/subaru-xt4.jpg)
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In the most base sense, even if the AmigaOne had succeeded and OS4 had already been released, the Amiga today would be merely relegated to "hobby" machine due to it's dependence on outdated, underpowered, and overpriced hardware. In the blitz of Dell $199 Pentium IV PC's (which by the way are still faster), there is simply no remaining market for a $500+ motherboard with a 1 Ghz CPU.
Even Jobs sees this to a certain extent, though it remains to be seen how reasonable his new PC Macs will be priced. If I were to have one regret, it is that I'm able to say "told ya so" to TPTB almost 4 years ago.
Wayne
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Pure retro-PASSION...that's what "purpose" my A1200 with 68060 accelerator has. Nothing more nothing less. I could quite easily live without it and simply run an Amiga emulator on my Dell Duel CPU Xeon 2.5GHz Workstation. My Amiga is a luxury retro leisure system and my PC is a practical workhorse for getting things done. :-)
As for the "new generation" of Amigas, well they hold no interest for me. I've never been tempted by Amiga Tech's overpriced IBM Clone systems just because they have an ugly "AMIGA TECH" sticker pinned to them. Amiga to me is COMMODORE not AmigaOne, Pegasos, or even PPC.
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@dillinger:
"Amiga Tech" still produced classic Amigas, such as the A1200 Magic Pack and A4000T systems. Well...maybe not so much produced as re-used Commodore leftover stock.
"Amiga Inc." is the current official owner of the trademark(s). They sold a license to a 3rd party company called Eyetech which is responsible for the new AmigaOne units.
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Yes, i owned one of those rebadged AmigaTech A1200s with the converted PC drive installed. It still wasn't enough to convince me that AmigaTech had anything to do with the *real* development of the classic Amiga. That was all done duering the Commodore period.
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No doubt about it that Amiga Tech didn't bring anything new to the users other than continue releasing old stuff, however, bless them for re-releasing the A4000T, as C= only managed to sell/manufacture about 300 complete systems before going bankrupt.
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hello from amigaimpact: you must translate it :
bonsoir a tous , je suis nouveau sur le forum mais j'ai connus l'amiga durant 8 ans et c vrai que ca fais mal de savoir que cette machine ne donne plus d'interet au grand public :(
moi perso le truc que je trouvé genial sur l'amiga n'etait pas la machine en elle meme, qui certe ne faisait aucun bruit ne planté rarement lors de chargement et n'etait pas a m'etre a jour toute les 5 minutes ... mais plutot la qualité et l'imagination des createurs de jeux video de l'epoque.
les jeux etaient vraiment innovant et excellent, tous les styles acuels (rps fps shot ...) viennent de ces machines.
actuellement ce qui me surprant le plus, c le nombre d'emulateur amiga present sur terre. j'ai l'impression que c l'emu qui marche le mieux sur toutes machines confondue ou presque ( cf pspuae) . C cela que je trouve etrange et ca veux bien dire que ce sont les programmes edités a l'epoque qui vallaient la peine et non pas uniquement le hardware amiga je pense...
actuellement plus aucune société a part nintendo et peut être gizmondo arrive a innover au niveau jeux et moi je pense que c ce qui manque a l'amiga tout simplement...
car c une machine pas cher a l'achat , fiable , performante (autant qu'un mac) et tj d'actualité mais il faut innover. et si personne si bouge le cul pour sortir des jeux (mm en 2D) ou applications (comme la eye toy ou de 3D) personne ne voudra plus s'y interresser.
en tout cas c mon avis, car c pas maintenant que je reprendrais un amiga malgré mon reel engouement et ma nostalgie (lorsque je joue au emu) que j'ai pour cette becane. (cf apple avec son ipod , sans lui apple serait mort aujourd'hui ou a petit feu)
l'amiga a besoin de nouvelles applications innovantes ou d'un hardware accessible a tous comme un PMP, qui serait une premiere etape ,et faire comme pour l'ipod .
voila, desolé pour les puriste mais je pense pas etre dans le faux avec ma reponse
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[google translation]
good evening has all, I am new on the forum but I knew Amiga during 8 years and C true that Ca hurt knowledge that this machine does not give any more interest to general public: ( me perso the trick that I found genial on Amiga was not the machine in it same, which certe did not make any noise seldom planted during loading and was not has to be up to date for me every 5 minutes... but rather the quality and the imagination of the createurs of video plays of the time. the plays were really innovating and excellent, all the styles acuels (rps fps shot...) come from these machines. currently what surprant me more, C the number of Amiga emulator present on ground I have the impression that C moved which goes best on all machines confused or almost (cf pspuae). C that which I find strange and Ca please say well that in fact the published programs has the time vallaient the sorrow and not only the Amiga hardware I think... currently more no company has share nintendo and can be gizmondo arrives has to innovate on the level plays and me I think that C what misses has Amiga quite simply... because C a machine not expensive has the purchase, reliable, powerful (as much as mac) and tj of topicality but it is necessary to innovate. and if nobody if the bottom moves to leave the plays (mm in 2d) or applications (like the eye toy or of 3d) nobody will want y interresser any more. in any case C my opinion, because C not now that I would take again Amiga in spite of my reel passion and my nostalgia (when I play moved) that I have for this becane. (cf APPLE with its ipod, without him APPLE would have died today or has small fire) Amiga needs new innovating applications or of an accessible hardware has all like a PMP, which would be a premiere stage,et to make as for the ipod. veiled, desolé for the purist but I do not think of being in the forgery with my answer
[/google translation]
Anyone that actually knows french, please do correct the horrible grammar of google :)
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i don't think amiga is dead because they make software for mobile phone or pda ....
but for a real revival of amiga they must make biggest effort , on simple hardware : make a PMP (portable media player) as ipod but with other function and the workbench too in this machine.
the amiga hole is the software, the best is the hardware so amiga must make new game software in 2D for multi
-platform and for a futur amiga pmp. in 90's all game are excellent but now on pc and console ,all is the same. the only innovating is the Nintendo DS and perhaps Gizmondo
excuse me reflect for my post message ;)
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good evening has all, I am new on the forum but I knew Amiga during 8 years. and it's true that this machine does not give any more interest to general public.
me personaly, the trick that I found genial on Amiga was not the machine in it (hgardware), which did not make any noise, seldom planted during loading, and was not has to be up to date every 5 minutes... but rather the quality and the imagination of the createurs of video game of the time.
the gameplay were really innovating and excellent, all the styles used now (rpg fps shot...) come from these machines. currently what surprise me more, is the number of Amiga emulator present on informatic system.
I have the impression that all people play emu game than machine game (cf pspuae). is that which I find strange and say well that in fact the published programs from past been sorrow and not only the Amiga hardware I think... currently more no company has share nintendo and can be gizmondo arrives has to innovate on the gameplays and me I think that 's what i misses has Amiga quite simply...
because this machine is not expensive to purchase, reliable, powerful (as much as mac) and always of topicality but it is necessary to innovate. and if nobody moves to make new gameplay (mm in 2d) or applications (like the eye toy or of 3d) nobody will want interrest it any more.
it's my opinion, because it's not now that I would take again Amiga in spite of my reel passion and my nostalgia (when I play emu) that I have for this machine. (cf APPLE with its ipod, without him APPLE would have died today) Amiga needs new innovating applications or of an accessible hardware, like a PMP, which would be a first stage, and to make as for the ipod. I do not think of being in the forgery with my answer
[/FLASHBACK translation] :)
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It's a fun hobby.
Childhood curiosity of how things worked in my C=64 and Amiga 500 lead me into the engineering field. I wanted to be a systems designer, but have been content as a chip designer by day, and still fiddle with Amiga things in what free time I have. Amigas had plenty of hacks on aminet to tinker around with and learn from and have fun building. PCs didn't. On PCs, everything is already done, there's really nothing for a hobbyist to do there. Nothing to tinker with. No missing features to add. No drivers to write. No hacks to do. Heck, you really can't even swap out a dead chip to repair a bad board anymore on PCs. What's the fun in that?
I enjoy coming up with ideas for hardware designs for Amiga things, though I haven't actually built any of them. Solving problems that don't exist in the PC market, which can take systems design beyond what PCs are or do, in terms of how the things are built.
There's not much that's "realistic" about using an Amiga today, though I do enjoy the fact that I can't get any of them email viruses constantly going around in PC land. I do the occasional image format conversion or resize using ImageFX. Other than that I honestly don't use my Amiga for much these days. I still have never played any of the PPC/Warpup games I bought as they were released, I eventually will enjoy these as soon as I get my A3000d towerized and CSPPC card installed there, as I finally got the PPC card recently. Heck, by now my AmigaOne/OS4 probably plays many of them, I just need to find time to try them out. While I'm in the OS4 private beta group, I somehow ended up without an OS4 registration, so I can't download the OS4-native updates to anything from Hyperion, but some may work as shipped.
But for any real-life day to day work, Amiga is showing its age. Hopefully things will turn around a bit if Mozilla and OpenOffice ever get ported. Papyrus has potential since it's Word compatible too.
But I can't use it for PCB design. I can't conveniently carry it with me when I go out of town. You can't play the first-run games on it, and there's some PC games today that the current hardware is not capable of playing. While we once had Maple, there's no up to date math software. No educational software such as for learning a foreign language. I can't use it to do my income tax return. My PC does all of those things now. I mostly use Firefox for web browsing as many web sites I do to don't work in Ibrowse anymore.
But I still use it for fun. I don't get along with Windows well. Linux is hard to get things working in, but I do like it after that part. I hope to get MythTV running someday on my Linux box. I'd love to see Amiga do all these things so I don't need so many computers laying around taking up space anymore, but it will be some time before this happens.
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:-( :-( .oh {bleep} .
not good thing for us
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I kinda hate to keep using this analogy every time this question comes up, but.....I own a 1971 Mustang Coupe, I ride a Harley Softail Classic. Sure, I could drive a newer Mustang, ride a Crotch Rocket, and use a PeeCee with Multi-Gigahertz of speed, but it's not how fast you get to your destination, it's the quality of the ride that gets you there. It's the sheer FUN of it. That's what the purpose of Amiga means to me. :-D
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Absolutely! The fun and the nostalgia factor is what makes it, plus the "tinkering around" factor that you get with real physical classic hardware!
I've just spent a while installing Workbench 3.1 on my "new" (to me!) A3000 [thanks Castellen!] and faffing with softkickers to get KS3.1 running from RAM. Why? Just for the hell of it! Installing from floppies is great!
As the other posters have said, I also use PCs for my actual real work, getting things done, etc, but will still return to the Amiga for "classic" stuff.
- Ali
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I was going to write a long tedious technical explanation with lots of proofs, but I'll put it very simply like this:
Amiga makes me happy :-)
Linux makes me yawn :oops:
Windows makes me annoyed, frustrated, disgusted and violently angry
:-x :evil: :pissed: :furious:
I prefer to be happy. :-D
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Our classic Amigas really only have one bane to their existance... that being the cost of new hardware. While I understand the cost is due to low production runs, which is due to the low demand... I think if the really good and most needed products were mass produced and sold cheaper, the market would be there to support it.
My A4000D lacks PCI due to the cost. I bet if Elbox cut the price in half, the higher demand would lead to profitability. The only thing keeping me from using my miggy more is the serious lack of screen resolution and my aging 1950 monitor. I could get a scandoubler, but that's nearly the price of a Mediator... And I have all the nifty compatable toys for it already from my various PC upgrades.
And for the sake of all things decent someone PLEASE start producing accellerators again!
Sorry, bit of a tangent there... Yes, it's a hobby platform. We're all retrocomputing geeks. Fans of the greatest computer systems ever devised... The platform that created the digital music era... The platform that changed computer graphics forever... The platform from which Babylon 5 and ST Voyager's graphics were produced.
Amiga is dead, long live Amiga!
Vivat AROS!
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It's merely a novelty. As for usability, Amiga just doesn't hold up.
I use mine to play games that don't work right on WinUAE, or I can't turn into ADFs. Windows software can do almost anything better than Amiga if you know what to get (which includes shell replacements and scripting languages). I still say Linux is only good for web servers and has very poor interface design. Now that Apple is going x86, I no longer have interest in picking up a Mac mini, which means I'll have to wait for their next budget machine just to try out their OS.
I think people are just so desperate to stay away from Microsoft's fluffy code and Apple's condescending attitude. There really isn't any serious OS competition outside the server/embedded market.
A better question is, "What is the purpose of Amiga Inc., currently???"
They have hardly and involvement or interest in OS4 or "classic" Amigas, they have outsourced their platform to a standard PC architecture with a PPC CPU, and their flagship product for PDAs and cell phones is incredibly late, underdeveloped, and unimpressive.
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What is Amiga's Purpose currently???
Keep holding on to the trademark in the vain hope that somebody want to buy it? :lol:
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I don't care why others want to use AmigaOS. For me it's very simple. It's the only operating system out there that is suitable for general desktop use, which doesn't drive me nuts. And I've been all over the place with different *nixes, Win, MacOS and so on. Sooner or later I always think "Aw man. Why can't this just work like on an Amiga" and I go back.
My A1 has nowhere near the raw processing power of my PC, but if I used that for any serious work (that is: anything but gaming) I'd lose my mind. I just can't stand if the interface doesn't respond at once. Simply put: I've seen no system that responds as fast as AmigaOS 4. Besides that it has the best app for what I do the most : IRC. I also prefer SimpleMail over anything I've seen on Windows / OS X.
I also like that the system is pretty transparent. You can dive as much into it as you want to. You don't have to, but it can be fun. Like everyone else I could use a better browser. A newer IBrowse, Aweb or a port of KHTML/Firefox certainly would be nice.
What else... Hmm. Java-support would be nice. A wider range of printer drivers. Then I'd have everything I *need*. Everything else that comes along is just a nice bonus really.
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Allow me to pine... What is a Mosquito's Purpose Currently?
Answer: They both still do what they were designed to do, and quite well at that.
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My A1 has nowhere near the raw processing power of my PC, but if I used that for any serious work (that is: anything but gaming) I'd lose my mind. I just can't stand if the interface doesn't respond at once. Simply put: I've seen no system that responds as fast as AmigaOS 4.
Not to get off topic, but most responsiveness and stability issues I've seen with Windows are related to badly built systems, crappy drivers, and/or lots of horrible background junk put on by OEMs like Gateway and HP. A clean, retail version of Windows on well-matched hardware is pretty friggin' fast and stable. The OEMs seem to ruin practially everyting, especially HP! UGH!
I'd imagine using an AmigaOne for graphics, audio, or other "serious" work to be pretty harrowing. Not like I own an AmigaOne, of course, but I have tried over a dozen different OSes, and Windows still rules for anything other than script programming and web servers. :-)
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@Waccoon
I recently saw a freshly installed AMD64 ~3GHz system. Yes, it booted very fast (no doubt thanks to the SATA drive and 2 GB ram), but there were still delays of *seconds* in some interface interactions. That's just not acceptable to me at all. My own 1,6GHz system (2000+) is still ridiculously slow at most standard operations. It's all brand stuff too (decent Asus board, Asus Radeon, fast ram etc). I can agree that Windows isn't as bad/slow/unstable as some make it out to be, but it's still far from something I could use on a daily basis without tearing my hair out. It would drive me nuts if I had to wait for it to respond. I guess that's why I have shortcuts to the two games I use the machine to play right on the desktop. :-P
Some parts of Windows respond well enough assuming nothing else is running on the system, but what use is that, when you use an operating system for running programs? Regardless it's just not fast enough. As for Windows ruling... well, for games it's certainly > MacOS X, but for pretty much everything your average user needs to do MacOS X > Windows. By a friggin' huge margin.
I still like my OS4 better though 8-)
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Yea, sometimes I wonder too...
I can't watch movies on my 040, I can't hear clear mp3s, I can't draw on higher resolutions but I still use my amiga!
Why?
Because I can download from EVERY site I want , I can see my emails and I can share data with any machine aout there with NO worry about Dialers, Trojans, Viruses etc...
I love this Out-Dated (and well forgotten by those virus-creators idiots)! In this crazy virus-hack-rediculous situation Amiga is THE perfect cure :-D
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It's not just the speed, but the stupid low priority Windows gives to screen refreshes and user interaction. Say, you click on something and a popup window appears. The window should be drawn as fast as possible, then do whatever stuff that has to be done in the background. Instead, the window half-draws, appears to freeze for a few seconds, then finally finishes drawing. This is completely unacceptable in a 2005 operating system running on a 3-4Ghz computer with tons of RAM.
But this is just a minor annoyance compared to the much larger design flaws in Windows. Who could ever think the Registry is a good thing?? (although makers of spyware seem to like it) And what about configuration changes that mysteriously go back to MS defaults after a random amount of time? And the bugs! I started to list whenever I found a bug that I could reproduce - and I now have a list of over 500 bugs! I have to use this crap at work, but I certainly will not have a Microsoft product in my home!