Classic Amigas - Still Useful?

[TheBilgeRat]

I still use my systems daily.  Right now, its just my 68010 A2000 with a 40Mb SCSI hard drive and CDROM and indiECS.  I use it to code C, play WHD Load, and just generally have fun learning all about amigaOS 3.1.  I have an A4000d, but I have no display for it at the moment.

I do often bemoan the cost of the equipment, and sure a WinUAE setup is pretty freaking awesome in terms of raw speed.  BUT - there is a sort of je ne sais quoi about the real deal that I enjoy.  I'm going to soup this A2000 up as much as I can, and once the recap is done on the 4000 it will get some love as well.

I like seeing what I can accomplish with what I have.

[TheBilgeRat]

I'm not going to say you're wrong here, but I think there has been an increasing push towards computer-as-consumption-device in the last decade and a half - and while I think it's only gotten really bad in recent years, it was already starting to be a trend when Windows XP came out (as fond as I am of XP, look how many steps were taken into "media integration" with it, as compared to 95-2k. Hell, it was the version where they introduced a dedicated "Media Center" version of the OS.) Nowadays it's apparently expected that an operating system will auto-index all your media files into a master library, auto-play any CD or DVD you drop in the drive, auto-everything so that you barely have to get up off the couch to be a media consumer.

Don't get me wrong, there certainly is a lot of great productivity software available for Windows (which is why it's taken me so long to even consider switching some of my pursuits over to my Amiga,) but the emphasis has shifted, and continues to shift. And while the Amiga is just as great a games machine as it is a productivity machine, I think Hattig's point holds true, because it was out of the mainstream well before that shift began to take place.

When we got our first computer (a Mac IIcx) back in ~1992-93, it was expected that anybody owning a computer would be using it for productive work; the only systems that anybody saw as dedicated games machines were the consoles. And we did use it for productive and creative work; my brothers and I drew stuff in MacPaint, or created doofy stories in Storybook Writer and Opening Night. We got our first electronic piano and my mom took up sequencing and printing sheet music on that Mac. And this was the norm back then. None of us were "computer people" at the time, and only my next-younger brother and I really ever became "computer people." We were all just ordinary people exploring the potential this new environment had to offer.

That's not really true anymore. "Average users" don't create, they only consume. (We're told as much - repeatedly - by advocates of consumption devices like tablets.) Nowadays, I'm pretty much the only member of the family who does anything more creative than my taxes on my computer; my brothers play games or read Cracked, and my parents read the news or hang out on Facebook. There's been a shift, and I think I'm the only one who's even noticed. And even I have more trouble getting myself in a creative mood on my modern systems.

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just psychological; maybe putting myself in an old environment causes me to revert to the old mindset. But there's just a certain je ne sais quois electronic-muse that vintage computers have and modern computers don't.

QFT.  It is actually the "clunkiness" that keeps me coming back.  I turn it on, work through some C stuff, actually wait on the compiler (I have yet to wait on GCC even on my P4!), and am actually rather productive on it.

But yeah - I agree about computers as appliance.  There seems to be little room left for people who don't want that, unless you like Unix.  And if you don't?  You're SOL.  Unix/Linux is actually boring to me these days.  Amiga fills a nice niche.  Its that je ne sais quoi!