I've said it before....
I used a real hardware Amiga 2000 for fairly serious/hobby work (not gaming) until 2008. This was a heavily expanded computer with lots of bits and bobs. I used it for music recording and graphics work.
The hardware finally failed in 2008 - I tried for months to get it going again, but it always meant having to hunt for some overpriced, extremely hard to find aging component.
I was pretty devastated, but I knew that the day would come. I was depressed about having to move to PC and Amiga emulation. I just thought it wouldn't be the same.
Then I got my PC up and running with UAE.
This has been the BEST Amiga experience I've ever had. All my productivity apps (rendering software, music software, graphics software) all run super fast now with loads and loads of RAM. I can transfer files back and forth between Amiga and Windows apps in seconds. I can get much more done with my Amiga.
And YES I *DO* consider it a real Amiga. It's smooth, it crashes far less than my real Amiga did, and it does everything my hardware Amiga did, and more.
So, here are the reasons that I would rather use UAE than an older classic Amiga:
1. more reliable
2. does everything a hardware classic Amiga can do, but faster, smoother with less crashing
3. hardware won't fail, or if it does, easy to find replacement parts at your local corner computer store (that was the most frustrating part about maintaining a real hardware Amiga)
4. I can now run Amiga applications much faster, or ones that wouldn't even run in the limits of my real hardware machine
...so I'm a much more productive Amiga user now.
I'm not knocking real hardware. I love the real tactile experience of real hardware if you have the space for it. But honestly, If I hid my PC under the desk and put a real Amiga in front of its monitor, I don't see how many people could tell that AmigaOS was running in emulation. The emulation is very good.
This is from a guy who knows the experiential value of older hardware - I have a fully working VIC-20 setup in the corner. Now THAT I prefer to emulation - because the VIC-20 was a much more differently tactile system than a modern PC - chunky keys, breadbox case, slapping a tape in the datasette, cartridges, the old raster lines of a 14" colour TV. My big-box Amiga, with a seperate keyboard, an RTG card and hard-drive, was a lot closer to the tactile experience of a modern PC.
I still keep my old hardware around. I think if anything, the only real hardware Amiga I'd set up to use again is an A500 for gaming only. That is the furthest tactile experience from a modern PC, and harder to replicate in software (but not as hard as a VIC-20).
For serious Amiga productivity work, my PC is a reliable hardware platform that runs AmigaOS 3.9. That's how I consider it.
