Why can't a windows machine do it.

[Damion]

Amigas are fun, no doubt. There are some old games I still love to play on occasion. Tinkering with the OS is just fun.

I don't have any problems with my PCs though, either. Gaming and demos are fantastic. (Come on... who played FEAR, or watched a recent ASD demo, and can say "it sucks") Emulation is fast and can be just about perfect, WinXP rarely crashes, and my system boots (and shuts down) in seconds. (BTW -- A very small amount of preventative maintenance will keep your windows box in perfect working order almost indefinitely.) Yes, there can be a small amount of frustration at times... but that goes with any hardware/OS.

[Damion]

Minuous wrote:
>WinXP rarely crashes, and my system boots (and shuts down) in seconds.

Hmmm, I don't think so, not in my experience at least.

Then, assuming the hardware is even relatively modern, you have a problem.

Either

1 -- The hardware is poor quality or failing

2 -- The OS is mis-configured and/or unoptimized, wrong/outdated drivers, etc

A good WinXP machine should shutdown in about 3 seconds. (Maybe a little longer if you're running an antivirus.) After bios init, it should boot easily in under 20. (My old Athlon box could do it in 14, and that's 2002-era hardware.)

After 4 years of running severely overclocked, the single issue I had with my last PC was an occasional BSOD, which I finally tracked down to a failing Linksys wireless card. (And that annoyance lasted about a week).

Buy good hardware, spend a few days researching how to properly configure the OS, and Windows will give the average user years of trouble-free service.