New to the Amiga

[r0jaws]

Hi all,
I appear to be a bit of a minority, I NEVER had an Amiga when I was a kid, I lusted after a Atari ST, but was stuck on Speccy's back in the 80's. So am I alone in being a new convert?
After reading MicroMart's Amiga column, Browsing around a few forums, picking an old 500 up from a Car Boot Sale I'm Hooked. What a great piece of Kit. I love Retro-Electronics, and this is my favorite so far. The only downer is that I'm married, so I have to limit the amount of 'techie' stuff I can keep in the house and have had to ditch the 500 in favour of a 1200, which seems to have more potential for what I need.
I'm just about to ford ahead with getting this thing 'useful', and would like a hard disc, some rudimentary networking (basically the ability to browse t'internet) and play some of my old favorites without lugging about too much kit (extra external drives etc).
Any tips?
I've read a bit through other posts and am starting to get the gist but are there any mistakes I could profit by avoiding?
Any Howlers that someone has made and would like to kindly avoid me making the same mistake?
Thanks from a TOTAL noob,  :-D

[r0jaws]

To true! It felt like a good idea at the time, ho hum, should have posted on here first probably. Still I look forward to the next time!  :-o You live and learn.  :-)

[r0jaws]

cheese...cake, cheese....cake?
Aye lad, who wouldn't be entertained by his cheeky northern frivolities?
Thanks a lot you guys, Got a bit of research to do then!
By the way which of the Amiga os's would you recommend,
3.1, 3.5, or 3.9?
I like the console version of my 1200 very much and am not ready to 'box' it yet so I won't be looking at 4.0.
I checked out my 1200 and its bog standard, no drive clips, no  extras anywhere and 3.0 Rom chips. If I have 3.1 ROMs will they boot 3.5 & 3.9 then?
Is 3.9 necessary for t'internet? or does it just make life easier?
Lastly, what security concerns should I have about unleashing the beast on the web (from behind a router firewall of course), viruses etc?
I know i'm asking a lot, but as I USED to use Win98se (now on linux) I still get a bit nervy about venturing WWW wise on anything :-D