MorphOS - YOU should try it too

[pVC]

Now to my point: MorphOS is really a wonderful little OS (little because of its small foot print). I have never tried AOS4, I'm sure it's good too. But I have to say; I am really impressed with what a great product MorphOS has evolved into. It's fast, responsive, good-looking and really feels like an Amiga OS. I had never expected it to be as polished as it actually is. No tinkering - it just works. You are up and running after just a few minutes of installation. There are also quite a few good utilities, games and apps available for it.

Yeah, even though I've been using MorphOS since 1.4 times and registered the 2.0 immediately when it was released, I'm still impressed and keep smiling every time I install/update the 2.x versions It's ease and polishing you haven't used to see with Amigas before. Not that I wouldn't love to tune amigaish systems, but it's lovely to get started with basic needed things that easily.

Just to mention one: MPlayer. It plays any video you can through at it out of the box. Actually MorphOS could be THE OS to use with the living room computer connected to the TV. The MacMini is small and with MorphOS it boots fast, is responsive and can play quite a few games, even Amiga games through E-UAE. The only downside is that the G4 1.5 Ghz is not fast enough to handle HD1080p, but it seems to be just about able to handle some HD720p movies. Just think of the potential a small and cheap MorphOS box that handles 1080p could have.

I don't have any HD material to play anyway, so Mini is perfect media box for me. I watch all movies, listen music etc with it. It's easy to take with too. I can grab my mini and USB remote control with me and don't need even carry any keyboard/mouse. I've setted up remote control with MMKeyboard software on MorphOS and I can browse&play movies, play music, view/browse/rotate digital photos, navigate through dirs, control volume, seeking and playlists on all players etc with that.

I'm just a very happy MorphOS user, whose only regret is that I waited too long before getting into MorphOS.

Good you did it afterall anyway and welcome to the great community of happy MorphOS users

[pVC]

The Mac Mini option is the cheapest around too.

Actually you can get Power Macs even cheaper. They can be found for almost nothing. But mini is really nice because of its size

I found the apps to be basic and unpolished.  Web browsing was hit or miss and flash was, er, not so flashy.

Of course there's lack of certain apps, but if you compare to other amigaish systems, you can't complain. There are some really great apps which can be even better than similar apps on mainstream systems too. Like ShowGirls, MorphOS version of mplayer etc. Latest OWB is also very compatible with current web, it's very rare to get any "miss" pages, unless they lean too much on more complex flash things. Luckily HTML5 is coming nicely and that is well supported.

Although there is some TrueCrypt integration no real user based security is in place.  I don't think full disk encryption was available (though it might be now)

I haven't tried myself, but from Kryptos readme:
* Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.

That key is for that old, used G4 Mac Mini.  When it breaks you just lost your MorphOS.

It's been said many times, if your machine breaks and you can prove it, you get a new keyfile for the new machine. And AFAIK, you can get it for any supported platform. Try breaking your HW with some other operating systems with different kind of licensing scheme and you won't get new version of OS for other platform, if you can't find similar HW anymore of if you'd want to upgrade at the same time.

BTW. has anyone's Mac mini got broken yet? I don't think it's that big probability to break your computers in the time you would be using it before updating to faster/newer system anyway. On average, how many of you switch computer because it gets broken or you just want to get new one?-) Heck, my 80's/90's classic Amigas still work, as well as Pegasos1 which is years older than my current Mac minis.

[pVC]

A physical copy with manual I'd thought would be a more ideal solution, it could be distributed by the Amigakit and Vesalia, and would not only eliminate keyfile issues, it would also increase the exposure of MorphOS by being available from two very popular Amiga web stores.

That would enable the piracy pretty much. And the fuss of making new physical copies with each (newly) supported platforms... In my opinion it's much better to have downloadable ISO file and easy registering like it's now. You get the latest version always, physical copy would be obsoleted quickly and the wait of getting it etc. Only advantage of removing keyfile protection is the easy switching between machines, but as said it would enable easy illegal copying. But I think there could be some sort of discounted second keyfiles or something like that to encourage users to register to some platform even if they are thinking later to upgrade to others.. that sort of thing could be some kind of compromise...

[pVC]

1. Makes life harder for end users

In genereal I won't believe that's an issue. Pick up your preferred machine and register it. In all probability it will last long enough to be paid off.

Buying is much easier than going for online shopping on separate pages, for physical production or similar. It hardly couldn't be easier or faster. You get the keyfile quickly, usually the same day. And once you've got the keyfile, you can do reinstalls etc without further actions.

In practise it's not that Amiga users are going to switch computers that constantly. When you get a good system you will keep it long time or forever. I've registered my Mac mini 1.5GHz two years ago, it's still top-notch system in the Amiga world and I have no plans to part it in years, probably ever. In any case, ~100e is well spent during that time in my opinion. That money could have gone for far worse options too. Many people will waste that kind of money for really useless things in just couple of days. This is for years hobby, compare it to other hobbies. Really, think about it.