I'm not anywhere near as experience as the other people posting answers, but only a rusted Amiga fan who made a come back just a few weeks ago.
I currently own an A1200, A3000 (with DENEB controller which gives me access to modern peripherals) and a Mac Mini running MorphOS. Based on my short experience, I can say that I love the lightning speed of MorphOS and the "Amigaish" handling, but because of my inexperience I guess, I haven't been very successful running Amiga applications or games. I have so far only run ports of Amiga games and TVPaint (a DPaint kind app).
I must say that there's nothing like the real thing, the "real, good ole Amiga," BUT you must find a way of getting one to which you can add Internet connectivity to make it easier for you to download and use adf files, patches, apps to mount and manipulate files. If this becomes unaffordable, then make sure you have a PCMCIA cf adapter, making sure of course that you can use cf cards in a PC or Mac, to download and transfer what you need.
Just in recent days I learned about the Minimig and I must say that it looks very cool, but I am not sure it can close the gap well between old tech and new tech (for peripherals). I do have an interest in systems running OS4.1 such as SAM or A-AEON; for instance I like the sam440epflex. One thing I don't have very clear though is how the systems using PPC tech are better or closer to a real Amiga than the CUSA's Amigas.
I hope my comments as a rookie make sense.
