What still makes Amiga superior today?

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What still makes Amiga superior today?

Ehm, for not being a bloated, hacked together pile of crap?

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amigadave wrote:

foleyjo wrote:
just a quick question.

Is Amiga still the only true multitasking computer?

I assume you mean pre-emptive multitasking when you say "true".

It never was the only, or first true multitasking computer, but probably was the first personal computer for the masses that had true multitasking.  I believe that Windows started using pre-emptive multitasking with WindowsNT, or 2000 and don't know when the Mac got it, but I am sure has it now and for a while.

AFAIK Windows got it with Windows 95 and NT 4.0, and the Mac got it with MacOSX (while the AppleIIGS also had preemptive multitasking back in 1986)
And the Amiga was the first homecomputer with preemptive multitasking. I think the "true" stands indeed for preemptive multitasking. Others also advertised with multitasking while this was merely cooperative multitasking, which isn't really multitasking. Preemptive multitasking let  multiple programs run, while cooperative runs one program and 'suspends' other programs (though interrupts are shared, so a real time clock can keep on ticking)

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Hammer wrote:
Windows provides more than just showing some windows and move a mouse pointer and display the result on a screen.

Windows Print Spooler supports multi-user objects and network printing.

Programs shouldn't use that much. I mean, like Clive Sinclair said, you're able to control an entire nuclear facility with a ZX Spectrum (48 kilobytes of mem).
Factory computers (PLC's) have normally just a couple of megabytes on which it's programs are stored and run on.
The problem with PC's nowadays is the bad usage of object oriented programming. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for object oriented programming, but one has to be very careful with including libraries in their code. It's very easy to make bloatware (and considering programmers often have to program in a very short term, they don't have the luxury but doing the 'easy' way).

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spirantho wrote:
Tiny point about multitasking:

Windows got multitasking of a kind with '95 but it wasn't pre-emptive. Before that it was just task swapping. NT was pre-emptive I think.

It could do preemptive multitasking, but it wasn't good at it, because of backwards compatibility (and bad programming).
Windows 3.1 was 'task-switching', which is called 'cooperative multitasking' (or abusively shortened to 'multitasking').