Everyone has their own preferences I suppose. The good side of x86 is that you indeed have at least 3 options, maybe more.
I have tried all 3, and found for my amiga needs a winuae setup with windows shell removed (booting straight to amiga os3.x the best option for me.
Why? Easy first of all. Just setup windows xp, install winuae (or amiga forever)and replace the shell with winuae instead of windows explorer. You can remove (or better yet replace) the windows xp splash screens and so on. When my machine boots, I get a black screen, then I get this graphic as splash screen :
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&gbv=2&biw=1440&bih=809&tbm=isch&tbnid=9pKjPg9BqR3y8M:&imgrefurl=http://world-of-games.co.uk/Vintage%2520Computer/album/amiga_wallpaper_pack_by_zanagb-d365tso_png_orig.html&docid=gdvrmnmBu5CpUM&imgurl=http://world-of-games.co.uk/Vintage%252520Computer/album/amiga_wallpaper_pack_by_zanagb-d365tso.png&w=1440&h=900&ei=Xma3TrSWI4K62gWn9MDMDQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=431&sig=103593600349293501448&page=1&tbnh=143&tbnw=185&start=0&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0&tx=127&ty=58(You can make your splash screen any amiga graphic you wish)
If networking, sound and graphics work good in xp they will all work fine in winuae. This means choice of video/network/sound cards are not as critical as with amithlon or aros. So long as you've got windows drivers, everything will work in winuae.
Second, environment I suppose. I can click on demos, they start. Any amiga 68k software in fact, just works. I have 4,000+ whdload games installed, and all of them work fine. I have tons of original amiga applications, graphics, sound, whatever, and it all just works.
For joystick yes you can use a competition pro, or just about ANY USB joystick) I'm using one of these with the buttons remapped :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-NES-Retro-PC-USB-Controller-/290627602707?pt=Video_Games_Accessories&hash=item43aac14913#ht_1982wt_905I also have a competition pro that works fine right out of the box with winuae and no tweaks required. I just think they are stiff and not a joy to use.
I haven't used aros much in recent years. I recently installed a new system and was horrified to see whats been done with winuae. It used to just work. but was not very "integrated" Now it seems to be a buggy mess in the latest version. I find it so bad its barely usable. (screen redraw problems crashing) At least that was my experience. Since using amiga 68k apps and games especially is a high priority for me, AROS would not be my choice anymore. If they fixed the uae so it works properly again and get a better browser I'd switch again I think... Browsing is not much better than winuae but faster at least. Amithlon I can't say I have to install it and see now that I've fixed my hardware problems, but I think its a big effort to install and then you have to deal with alot of mods to run software which uses custom chipset (Most games and many apps)
Steven
