Will there every be another computer like the amiga?

[zombie10k]

Yes I fear you may be right... Remember "Back in the day" when there were tons of computers to pick from, and everyone argued why their choice was superior?

Does anyone else miss that time when there were lots of different computers, using lots of different processors, operating systems and
enviorments? I sure do...

one of the problems with this time period that I can recall, is that the large number of different manufacturers / OS's put the user on their own island looking for support/parts for their system. We both lived in phila, and I can only remember 1 real company that provided Amiga products and support, softwarehut. There may have been a few shops where one could buy an A500 here and there. Mail order wasn't as popular as it is now, and most of the good stuff was over in the U.K.

Not to mention the insane prices due to smaller markets, and the time period / cost for upgrades was monumental at the time. Memory prices, accelerator prices, HD prices, etc. There is a reason why a number of amiga fanatics I knew at the time only had a base A500 or second hand A1000. I recall when a friend bought an A2000 with a small HD and a 2meg agnus upgrade, it was well over $2,000 in 1989.

with the worldwide acceptance of wintel, we benefit from huge economies of scale, super-fast hardware and afforable prices. memory and HD space are practically free by comparison to that time period.

If there were 10 different systems / OS's today, I don't think these benefits of inexpensive hardware would be here today.

If someone told me in the early Amiga days,  that my shuttle SFF computer with Win7 would be timeshifting 1080 HD video and sending it over a home network to a number of Xbox360's in crystal clear HD w/ 5.1 I would have thought it was something from outer space. Although I did get the pleasure of working with a toaster / flyer in 1995 and the Amiga was no doubt ahead of it's time. Maybe the Amiga could have been my 1080 processing machine if it lived.

with that said, I have a personal attachment to my amiga collection that isn't there with even my most powerful wintel boxes. maybe it's because it truely was an exciting time to be a computer geek.

[zombie10k]

I think you have to stop living in the eighties and, open your eyes. The Amiga is a piece of hardware and the OS is only lines of (mostly ASM+BCPL if we talk about the original 1.x OS) code.

You had a CPU, several chips specialised in graphics (copper+blitter), a chip doing (great) sound (and some I/O) stuff and a case.
Back then, PC didn't do sound (Mac was doing some audio though), had mostly text-modes or low-color/low-resolution graphics and of course not any kind of hardware acceleration.

Now, if we get back to today, what do you have in a PC ?

 - a CPU (powerful, dual-core, 64bit, capable of doing SIMD, and many more)
 - a (powerful) graphics chip doing many many more than any Amiga has ever done
 - an audio chip (doing perfect audio stuff, even more than your ears can detect with 24bit audio,...)
 - you even start to have chips doing some PhysX stuff (integrated in Graphics Boards)

Everything of course works in DMA (provided your OS has proper drivers).

Sounds very much like an Amiga to me.

i've tried to stay out of this because of the MAC vs PC arguments, but I like your thought process regarding today's hardware and software capabilities. I've had an Amiga since the A1000 in 1986 right through an A4000 Toaster / Flyer system in 1995 (super expensive at the time). All the time following every mainstream OS from the late 80's right through today.

When CBM went under, there was a time when I thought the innovation was going to die along with it. IMO, there were a number of dark years from both camps. Now in 2010, I can edit 1080HD video like it was nothing on either platform, using inexpensive hardware.

Just recently, I revived an old 2003 Shuttle SFF SB75G2 with 2 GB of cheap ram, threw in a $75 1 TB green drive, and pulled an ATI AGP Video card from the dust bin. Installed MCE 7 and connected it to the Hauppauge HD-PVR. A short config later, I am timeshifting / streaming 1080 video over a GB home network to a number of dedicated Xbox 360 media center extenders.

This is the kind of fun tinkering I would have dreamed about in the 80/90's using the Amiga and with today's excellent hardware and OS's, much of that innovation has resurfaced for me.

Having said that, I will never be quite as attached to the hardware of today as I am with the Amiga's of yesterday. I am glad there is still a large following. It's hard to imagine there would be the same enthusiasm today over the Mac or PC had their time come to an end 15+ years ago.

[zombie10k]

Well, why do you think there is this enthusiasm for 15+ years old stuff ? Simply because it's been dead for 15+ years... If Apple had been dead since 1994 it would have been the same, probably. If Amiga was alive and had released new hardware, new software since 1995: do you think so many people would still be playing with 15+ years old stuff ? I really don't think so. You're always more attached to dead stuff...

That being said, I'm happy my (so-bloated) OS doesn't crash, at all.

perhaps, it's hard to say for sure. I think Commodore in general (C64 & Amiga) has a special place in the hearts of enthusiasts today who remembered this computer as being unique and ahead of it's time during the mid 80's through the early 90's.

Look at the sky-high prices of some of the used hardware, great new products like the individual ECS and AGA flicker fixers, and a large community support system.

I collect all kinds of classic computers dating back to the 70's. No one is knocking down my door for my TI/99 or my Atari 800. I couldn't give away my Mac classic B&W or the original Compaq lugable.

I've been offered small fortunes for my GVP A530 Turbo and a mint SX-64 with the original software/manuals. I'll generally part with any of my retro collection before giving up the C= goodies. None of those systems captured my enthusiasm at the time as the Commodore computers.