Was this your first Amiga?
I have to agree with you though, to strangers of Workbench it's all a bit complicated. There's definite room for improvement on the "accessibility" front regarding new potential users however. I think general Amiga users like to tinker with the Workbench though and most of the enjoyment comes with the tinkering and building up your own "Workbench" (no easy task).
These packs are supposed to be easy, but I admit not using them on real Amiga's - I use them under WinUAE emulation only. My Workbench is of my own creation and that's how I like it, but it does take an age to build a usable Workbench (a million aminet downloads). I enjoyed it though.
OS3.9 should be a fairly straight forward install (from CD bear in mind), but of course you would need a CD drive hooking up to your 1200 first. But by the way I read your post, I'm sure you'll be putting that 1200 back on Ebay. One positive is that it will sell, and I'm sure for the same price you bought it at.
