I have been an active Amiga user since 1987 and have quite a few Amigas that I use a lot from time to time. But I have also followed with interest and read about AmigaOS4 and MorphOS. Until now I haven't got into any of the two because of the rather pricy hardware that is needed, which is a rather bad excuse because classic Amigas are expensive too.
That was until a few weeks ago, when I bought a MacMini G4 1.5 Ghz on eBay for a reasonable price. I went the MorpOS route and became a registerated user, after wiping OSX off the hard drive. I would never have anything Apple inside my house. Never liked it and I think OSX is slow, user alienating and overrated. I guess I can live with having some Mac hardware as long as I'm only running an Amiga-like OS on it. :-)
Now to my point: MorphOS is really a wonderful little OS (little because of its small foot print). I have never tried AOS4, I'm sure it's good too. But I have to say; I am really impressed with what a great product MorphOS has evolved into. It's fast, responsive, good-looking and really feels like an Amiga OS. I had never expected it to be as polished as it actually is. No tinkering – it just works. You are up and running after just a few minutes of installation. There are also quite a few good utilities, games and apps available for it.
Just to mention one: MPlayer. It plays any video you can through at it out of the box. Actually MorphOS could be THE OS to use with the living room computer connected to the TV. The MacMini is small and with MorphOS it boots fast, is responsive and can play quite a few games, even Amiga games through E-UAE. The only downside is that the G4 1.5 Ghz is not fast enough to handle HD1080p, but it seems to be just about able to handle some HD720p movies. Just think of the potential a small and cheap MorphOS box that handles 1080p could have.
So to every amigan out there: do yourself a favor and get a cheap MacMini G4 and download MorphOS. You will never regret it. And before you ask; no, I'm not paid anything for writing this. :-)
I'm just a very happy MorphOS user, whose only regret is that I waited too long before getting into MorphOS.
