Was using Amigas exclusively up until around 2004, when I bought a Duron based x86 system for use with BeOS. After about 6 months or so I mothballed the A1200 and A3000.
Eventually both were passed onto other Amiga users.
I still use UAE but mostly I use Linux these days.
As to the why - simple really: The Amiga simply could not cut it online any more (arguably it never could but that is a whole different question). Trying to keep it going online stably whilst at the same time getting every last ounce of performance out of them was taking more and more time with fewer gains each and every time.
Using the Duron (and the systems I've had since) was a breath of fresh air by comparison - I had so much power at my fingertips I felt spoiled! I could watch films and they didn't look like postage stamp sized gifs blown up to fullscreen. I could listen to MP3's without my system groaning under the strain. I could play games that were modern at respectable frame rates. I could have an application crash and it not require me to reboot.
All in all, going over to x86 for me was about ease of use: The Amiga, whilst a great system in it's day and certainly easier to use day to day than other machines of the same era, required a great deal of time and effort on the part of the user to allow it to perform tasks that other more modern systems offered as out of the box functionality.
I don't regret for one minute retiring the Amigas. It was a great machine for me to learn on. But tbh even by 2000 really, for day to day use it was hopelessly behind the times and had been for a while.
