I first used an Amiga many years ago - round about
1990. I bought my son an Amiga 500+ on the advice
of the manager of a Tandy (remember them!!) store in
Manchester. My son's reading and spelling wasn't so
hot at the time, and my computer literacy was nil, so
with me reading the manual and him doing what I told
him to do we managed to at least get the little lady
up and running. We managed to format a few disks and
do the very few things you can do with Workbench and no
hard drive. Then one day my son discovered DPaintIII,
I walked into his room to see what all the flashing
lights were about - and I was hooked. The 500+ was a
little too large for him, so I bought him a 600 and I
had the 500+. Very soon I acquired a hard drive and got
a few programs on it, and there has been no stopping me
since.
I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with
1200's, and nothing has changed. I use one now as my
general everyday workhorse, but it drives me mad sometimes.
There were two reasons why I changed from the 500+ - which
I still have incidentally - firstly the lack of colours in
DPaint and secondly the fact that I invested in FinalWriter
and it was so dreadfully slow on the 500+.
I have always wanted a 4000 - I call it my dream machine -
and I now have one. At the moment it isn't working. A
friend got it working for me, and it was fine, then suddenly
it decided to keep crashing on me. I might swear at 1200's
but NEVER at 4000's. Nice machine, you will work one day,
won't you!!! I have also acquired a towered 1200 with a
4000 keyboard and an Amiga tower, but I can't get along with
the PC monitor that comes with it. I want to change it for
a decent Amiga monitor, but where I live they don't turn up
very often!! I gave two to my friend, but I think I may have
to beg one back off him very soon.
I also have a little bit of history tucked away under my desk
at the moment - an Amiga 1000, complete with signatures and
paw print!! It actually does work. I got it from an Amiga
group I joined some time ago, which is now defunct. I have the
Kickstart and Workbench disks too. One day I will try it out
again. I also inherited a rather large and ancient (but working)
SCSI hard drive - 2 gig would you believe!! - and one day I will
use it to make a backup for my 1200 hard drive and storage for
other bits and pieces.
Unfortunately, like many others before and since, I am finding
the need to invest in the dreaded PC. However, there is no way
I am going to give a PC desk room, so it will have to be a laptop.
I have a digital camera which comes with software to extract the
pictures, and also software to make special CD's for my CDWalkman,
and neither of these of course will work on the Amiga. A few
years ago I would have bought a Mac for that, but now they are
going the same route as the PC there isn't much point. Although I
have long admired AdobePaintShop, but I believe this is available
now on the PC, so we shall see.
I live in beautiful Orkney, and most of the time I love it here.
However at the moment my life is being devastated by the Gestapo
(social services) and my time at the Amiga is lately spent writing
letters in my beloved FinalWriter. When I get to the stage of being
ready to put my fist through the monitor I resort to messing about
in DPaintV to bring a little bit of sanity back into my life.
Well, that's all about me. My friend David who also lives in Orkney
is also an Amiga fanatic, but he knows more about both Amigas and
computers generally than I do.
Best wishes to everyone else on the AmigaOrg forums. Long may you
continue to use the Amiga.
Kathy (Yesnaby)
