First Amiga

[amigadave]

Hey everyone,

I have very limited experience with Amiga but the couple times I have used it have been great.  Im looking to get some form of an Amiga to get acquainted with Amiga and hopefully get some good use out of it.  I guess my question is what do all of you Amiga fans think would be a good intro computer into the Amiga world?

Thanks for any help

Welcome to Amiga.org, enjoy your participation here.

It depends on what you want to do with an Amiga, which one would be good to start with.

If you just want to play some games and get a general feel for how an Amiga works, then go for the cheapest A500 with a trapdoor memory expansion for right now, or an A1200.  A600's are hard to find in some countries, but easy in others.  The three models mentioned above have the advantage that Individual Computers has designed, and is still designing new accelerators and RAM expansion devices for them, so you can upgrade them in the near future, if you like your experience with an Amiga.

Your budget and what you want to be able to do with your first Amiga will determine which one is best for you.  Good Luck and again, Welcome.

[amigadave]

Thanks for the input..ive read a lot about the different versions of amiga and im hoping to eventually be able to get a more modern system..but would a system like and a500 give me a comparable experience so that I will be experienced enough to be decent with a new system like 4.1 or so?

If you are interested in running a "Next Generation" Amiga system, you can try AROS for free on most PC hardware, just download it, burn it to a CD and boot it up.

For MorphOS, find a friend who already has MorphOS installed and can show it to you and let you play with it for a while, or find a free, or very cheap supported G4 Mac model and download the free install ISO, burn it to a CD and install in on your supported G4 Mac to test it out in Demo Mode, which runs for 30 minutes at a time before slowing down and requiring a reboot.

For OS4, find a friend who has it already and will let you play around with it for a while to see if you like it.  There is no other free way to check it out at this time and the hardware is all over $500 to $1,200 and up, so make sure it is what you want before buying.

All are excellent systems, but they are not for everyone.

All Next Generation systems are very different from using a original Amiga computer, so it is like comparing apples and bananas.  All Next Generation systems can run the older Amiga software natively or through an emulator.