Why do you stick with the Amiga?

[stopthegop]

I don't intend to start any big arguments over the merits of Amiga OS with this question. I'm just honestly curious what people perceive as the benefits over alternative solutions.

The Amiga is, by far, the best 'personal' computer ever created.  Windows, Macintosh, and Linux are the "alternatives".   Sometimes, in order to view a poorly written, poorly designed, non-standard website, I need to use an alternative computer.  

[stopthegop]

I'm sort of with guru-666... I was never much of a gamer. I was always interested in graphics (lightwave), telecommunications (BBS's), the internet (before it was the web... just usenet and telnet/ftp/smtp).. also did a lot of hacking with my Amiga.

So here it is 200x and the Amiga doesn't do any of these things well anymore... well unless I want to render low color images in low resolution.

The problem is, I am emotionally attached to the computer itself. It's lines, the click the floppy makes, etc. I love it... but once I turn it on I find I am very disappointed with the reality of it. It's not very useful.

8 color workbench, flickering screen, slow screen updates, and nothing really practical to do with it except watch demos and play some games. Browsing the web is too slow to be practical (even with an 030/50 and 64mb ram), and the text editors lack too many modern features to make them useful.

So it sits in it's original box shielded from the sun so it won't turn yellow.

In a sense, my C64 is more fun because I don't expect as much from it.

So I do love my Amiga... but what to do with it?

I was thinking that maybe I could install a ton of games with WHDLoad... I thought maybe it would help me make some good use of it.

Then I tried to configure WHDLoad. What a pain... I haven't gotten around to trying again.

So I dunno... I am considering going back to emulators. I haven't made up my mind yet.

You have a point, but maybe consider upgrading it with a better accelerator and/or pci with a decent graphics adapter and USB.  Believe me, the difference is night and day.  A whole world of possibilities will emerge.  It will feel like a new computer, but it will still be the same Amiga you know and love.  Granted this is not cheap.  Its undeniable, too, that brand new PCs are a lot faster than Amigas.  But so what?  They may be faster, but they're not better.  The term "fast" as used in computers is subjective anyway..  

Last year's PCs are "fast", but this year they're "faster" (supposedly).  Does that all of a sudden make last year's PC no longer "fast" -- the mere existance of something "faster"?   Its classic group-think;  singularly dumb, yet perfect for a consumer driven economy.  

[stopthegop]

By that reasoning, you are dumb if you

....Make a bogus analogy?

drive to your job on the other side of town because cars are "fast" but before cars, people thought running was "fast"...

"Car" is a noun, "Running" is a verb.  I compared two (similar) nouns.  Besides, people didn't declare walking obsolete when cars became ubiquitous.  

[stopthegop]

@ Murple:

Where did I say making computers faster didn't improve them?

I was critical of the widely held but simplistic belief, pervasive if not universal in the PC world, that the CPU clock frequence is the only thing that matters.  Most people who buy PCs are blissfully ignorant and give consideration only to that number...  how many "giggeh herts" a machine has.  I won't bother listing any of the thousands of other technical specifications germaine to all things electronic, particularly computers, but the CPUs clock frequency is just one number.  The machine could be a total piece of sh1t in every way, but as long as its got lots of them "giggu hurtez", the sheeple will buy it.