Way to sell an Amiga

[Franko]

You'd be hard pushed these days to sell an Amiga to most folk. Almost everyone I know who owns a PC or MAC haven't a clue about the machines they're using. To most a computer is just part of everyday life that they use to browse the net, do online shopping, pay bills, sort out finances, find info, download music or play the odd game on.

Most of them have no idea about adding extra hardware let alone even attempting programming. It is in a lot of case's something that you have to have cos it's cool to have one or it looks good sitting in a corner of the living room.

The Amiga on the other hand is a different beast altogether, it's a machine that encourages most users to learn about how it works, how to upgrade it or how to write programs for it. It's simply not suitable for most folk of today, who just want a computer to do a bit of browsing and ramble on about how fast the thing can play the latest 3D games, that all look and play the same.

The true meaning of home computing died a long time ago when machines like the Amiga, the AtariST and all the others of that generation were left behind by people who didn't have the willpower, time or patience to truly enjoy what home computing really means.

[Franko]

@ coldfish
 

You can still do all those things Franko, if you want to learn about today's machines and enthuse about hardware or software details it's all there.
More like computing went from being a hobby shared by a niche group who had these sorts of interests - to commodity items that are owned by people who really just want a black-box device to serve up internets and entertainments. The same thing happened with most emergent technology like steam trains, motor cars, radio, film, TV, etc...

On topic; the Amiga platform is well past its sell by date.

The kind of "resurrect Amiga" speculation/discussion/rants we see on this board today needed to be (and was) had 10-15 years ago. No one did anything meaningful then, no one is going to do anything of significance now.

Better just to remember it fondly for what it was and enjoy (the good bits) of what's left.

While I get what your saying and agree in part with some of it, I still hold onto the dream that one day someone will produce a new Amiga that is based on total backward compatibility with the original 68k based Amiga hardware (thats why I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Natami will see the light of day..). You would think with all these great advancements in technology that todays blindingly fast CPUs have, producing an old bit of 80's technology would be relatively easy...


@ persia

It's because in 16 years a lot of advance have taken place that don't require a person to know how a computer works. Everything just works, plug it in, turn it on, and away you ago. The Amiga world doesn't work that way, it's more plug it in, turn it on, guru, try to fix it, surf the net for an answer, fix it, guru, repeat process. Welcome to the '80s...

Also, the Amiga is back in the '80s in terms of user friendliness, on a Mac or a PC you don't have to understand how something works to use it, in the Amiga world you have to....

To use an Amiga you didn't have to be a programmer or some sort of technical whizz, the average user at most just had to insert some extra ram in the trapdoor or plug in an extra floppy. The thing with the Amiga was & still is, if you wanted to tinker around with it or learn to write your own programs then you could as it is a machine that allows you to do that quite easily if you want to.

I can't agree with you that old dinosaurs like myself would turn our noses up at a new Amiga, again the Natami looks like it could be the very thing that would satisfy most.


@ Amiga_Nut

In fact WB1.3 never got in the way of my creativity, only unreliable floppy disks! Today everywhere you turn there is a problem, the OS is slow, it is unresponsive, you need GIGAHERTZ of CPU power to display a shitty mouse pointer on a desktop and double click program icons.........Mac is even worse.

But people want torrent clients, modern browsers, super fast broadband connections, instant on USB connectivity with cameras and mp3 players......and so they have no choice anyway.

To me it's fine if people just want a box that you plug in and away you go with torrent clients, modern browsers etc. Good luck to them, thats their choice. This iMac I'm using for the web is all that it's good for (it can't even read a CD/DVD without locking up about 60% of the time and Safari & other progs keep crashing with an application not responding error), I can edit GFX burn CD/DVDs play games easier and faster on my Amiga than I can do on this Mac.



The thing is old technology to me is far better than any of the stuff available today. I won't buy a flatscreen TV for the simple fact that no manufacturer has yet to overcome motion blur (even those panasonic 600Hz ones). I still prefer Vinyl to CD's and especially to MP3. I've never owned a mobile phone as I don't see the point, never owned a car, prefer to use public transport or the incredibly old fashioned thing called walking...

I like things I can tinker with, even if your not supposed to. The first thing I do when I buy something, is to open the case up and see what's inside (not much nowadays I admit, with all this surface mount techno). Ok so bang goes your guarantee but even with todays stuff you can still do a bit of tinkering and learn about the equipment along the way.

To sum up, I'm just one of those folk who doesn't care too much about something working straight out the box. I prefer to footer around with things, learn how they work, how you can repair or improve them yourself and most of all enjoy myself doing that.

Guess I'm a dying breed but hey it keeps me happy... (as my friends & family always call me ' the last of the luddites...')