Allo Tommy
Hi and welcome to Amiga.org. Sorry to hear of your father's medical situation but at least if they are treating him locally with radiation that is a good sign, especially if they have implanted 'seeds' in the prostate gland.
Anyway, as regards the Amiga, I must tell it to you straight: no Amiga can replace your PC or MAC unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money. That is the bottom line about buying hardware, even 'old' Amiga hardware. And even if you did pay for quite a fast Amiga, you would definitely lose out on some applications that simply aren't available on the Amiga. In my case those applications are Poser, DESLock and certain scanning/graphics software.
What I would recommend is this (because Amigas are fun and you should definitely have a look at them):
1) Try an emulator first, as some users here have suggested. That will give you some familiarity with how the Amiga works.
2) Look for a plain Amiga 1200. I reckon that you can get an Amiga 1200 secondhand for a reasonable price. It is the accelerator cards and the 'bigger' machines such as the Amiga 3000 and the Amiga 4000 that cost quite a lot. But a 1200 you should be able to get if you keep an eye out on Ebay for a good deal (or maybe a user here sells his). You can upgrade that 1200 in your own time, eventually it can be transplanted into a tower case, with a fast accelerator board, graphics card, network card, perhaps even PCI cards. The A1200 is the cheapest classic Amiga you can buy that has the expansion potential to replace a PC or MAC (for general computing)
Or, you could stick with the emulator and save up for a fully-kitted out A4000 or even try a Pegasos or A1. These options are more expensive than a standard A1200.
