Amigas turn to play catch up - new intel cpu

[Duce]

Not sure how a new Intel chip affects the Amiga.  For all those whining about DRM and sneaky keyed decoding, you'd do well to investigate how much is inherently within your non Amiga OS's.  The big name OS's have been chock full of it for years.

90%+ of modern computer users don't know what DRM is, and don't care.  Sadly.  They want their AIM, Facebook and Gmail.

Aros doesn't run on 90% of the PC's I own, nor on my SAM 440, so it's as useless as a bag full of nipples to me regardless of what chips it runs on.  I've had nothing but misery out of Aros trying to run it on "modern" gear, and having to scour eBay for old video cards to run it, nah.  That being said, my recent experience with Morph was extremely pleasant, and OS 4 works great on the SAM.  I hope all AmigaOS variants continue to be developed for us grunts to fiddle around with, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for any of them to overtake Linux, OS X, or Windows.

I love the Amiga, and always will.  But anyone thinking a new chip, a new year, a new promise by C USA, A-EON that we're on the cusp of the Amiga retaking the computing world by storm is delusional.

There's no shame in enjoying hobbiest PC's, hell I bought a SAM.  Cost nearly 4x what my iPhone did, and I can't view half the web with it, my iPhone does more in terms of "modrn computing" than the SAM does.  I love it to death, but I'm also a realist.

Sorry to be a buzzkill

edit:  typos

[Duce]

PC gaming is far from dead, lol.  Consoles have taken a large chunk of the market, but you'll notice that game developers are still publishing PC versions right along side of PS3 and 360 versions.

"Most stuff is web based activity like Facebook" is where the current Amiga's really fall behind.  Half the modern, "hip" web 2.0 stuff isn't usable due to browser weaknesses on the Amiga.  Developers are busting ass to remedy this on all the Amiga OS variants, thankfully.  OWB and Timberwolf on my SAM don't offer half of what IE 5 did back in 1999.  I can't even hit Gmail for my email needs in a reliable way on OS4.

There's a lot of promise in the Amiga OS variants on a hobby level regardless of what chips/platforms they run on.  But they will never end up being a modern "this is the sole PC I own and it does everything any other $200 Windows PC will do", no matter how you slice it, for 90% of people that use computers in modern ways.

There's still some people using mildly beefed up A1200's for their daily computer, so it's mainly about what a guy needs.  My "modern" Amiga (SAM) cannot even get my onto GMail or Facebook with proper HTML formatting or crashing, and until it does it's simply not a viable daily driver, sadly.

That being said, I've got zero shame about running old, slow hardware like the SAM and somewhat outdated OS like OS4 for nostalgia factor.

[Duce]

PC Games are nowhere, it is rare for the AAA titles from 360/PS3/Wii to get onto PC, but yes at present there are a few exceptions even if they run terribly and need 300% more expensive rigs to run on. I bet EA's sales revenue from PC sales is a nat's fart in the grand scheme of things, even compared to Apps Store iPhone game sales.

The 12 million+ subscribers to World of Warcraft (PC/Mac only) and the 1.8 million sales of Starcraft II within 24 hours of launching show that PC gaming isn't down the crapper by any stretch.  PC game distribution channels like Steam (recently ported to Mac as well) are doing better than ever with games for computers.

I do agree the console will continue to take a chunk out of the PC gaming market, but the idea one needs a $3000 PC to play a game as smoothly as a $200 XBox 360 would run it is insane.  Outside of notoriously hardware hungry games like the Far Cry/Crysis franchise, most PC games run just fine on "common household" PC's that cost $500 and do much more than a console can.  Many people still prefer PC gaming to consoles, and games like WoW that are immensely popular and not available on consoles show that.  I've rarely found a game I have wanted to purchase that isn't both available on PC and console, or in some cases - strictly PC like WoW and some Steam provided games.

[Duce]

Main issues I've had with Aros compatibility are that I generally use PCI/PCIe SATA cards for my drives, which I've never had Aros work well with.  It's my personal preference to use cards for SATA vs. onboard, so I can't fault the Aros team for not adding support for what is likely .001% of the hardware make up of their audience.  I refuse to run old and slow, outdated IDE components, and I prefer add on SATA controllers  Gfx cards have been very problematic as well for me ('d prefer not to be stuck with 2d), as the oldest gfx card I own is a 295.