Bailing out!

[picasso_41]

I have an A4000T / 060 and it still works. I do simple word processing and DTP with Final Writer. It does what I want, although a bit slowly. I hate to switch to another system and reformat everything in different software, but I'm going to have to.

I plan to drop the Amiga soon because there's no one to fix it if it breaks and I don't know how to get on the Internet with it. I will move to the Mac, if I can decide which one to buy. Wintel machines are out of the question; they aren't any fun.

I'll probably keep the Amiga around in case it comes back, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Ni72ous]

My last amiga died on me over two years ago now, in this time i have used various versions of windows (XP at the moment) and i must say that i could not got back to amiga now for two reasons, 1) WinUAE is much faster than any amiga i have owned and 2) i would miss my online gaming, Medal of Honor etc, also i must point out that windows is bloated but XP has done me well, it is rock solid stable for me, please dont flame me, by the way amiga os is my favorite os by far.

[artman]

@amigamad

I'm with you, as I just said on another thread, I'm still using my original a1000 forgames, damn thing cost me $2200 USD back in '86, gotta keep getting my moneys worth out of the old gal.  Keep having FUN with your Miggies!

[KingTutt]

My gf threw out my aging amiga from my attic when we moved house. Sure it was tucked away gathering dust, but that by no means, said that it was worthless. Damn her. Anyways I regretted her doing that for a very long time. So much memories were riding on that thing. The long nights spent playing Superfrog with my brothers. The day my dad bought me the 512K expansion slot, so I could play the optimised version of SimCity and the expansion graphics packs. aaahh.

Yeah I have no Amiga now, and in fact go over to a friends house to ocassionaly play SuperCars I (which I can't get to work on any emulator for the life of me) And you know what I still love it. Before you scream blind fanatic, I happen to own 6 PeeCees, all networked running a myriad of m$ Oses, ranging from 98SE to XP to 2000 Server. I run an elaborate LAN and ftp/internet gateway. I know all there is to know about NT admin, I happen to work as one. But having said all this, I still look forward to an Amiga resurgence.

Its not that I don't acknowledge the advancements that m$ have made, heck I'd be a hypocrite if I did, since I spend most of my time using and benefitting from all this development that has brought the m$ platform where it is today. The thing is that computing has lost a sense of itself, since the Atari vs Amiga days. We have lost what it means to have fun computing. These days I waddle to my desktop and surf the net for anything, play 20 minutes of UT2K3 and then use Mirc the rest of the time. Wow aren't I having real fun here!

Give me back my Amiga dammit!

[Waccoon]

The fact I'm not much of a gameplayer anymore makes it easy to stick with Windows 2000, but I'm simply not going to upgrade Windows anymore because I'm fed up with it all.  Windows has plenty of things that drive me crazy, and there's no easy way around it.  I really want to use something else, but as much as I hate Windows, I hate everything else even more.

The only reason I still come to Amiga.org is because I'm just looking for something to replace Windows.  I don't really care what it is, so long as it works.  I tried Linux and hated it (even more today than I did a few years ago).  I use a Mac at work, and I think it's just such a primitive system, on top of the fact they cost too much and are loaded with bugs (boy, I could tell you stories about my years as a Mac system administrator, like the time half the machines in the office couldn't use their CD-ROMs after installing MacOS 8.0 from scratch on all of them!)

BeOS is pretty much dead, and everything else is designed to be a clone of UNIX running XWindows.  Even QNX, a true Amiga favorite, drove me nuts with all its cryptic error messages, and I never did figure out how to install the proper network driver.

AmigaOne shattered my confidence in AmigaOS 4.  I was really looking forward to using my favorite desktop again, but I don't want expensive, obsolete hardware on which to run it, especially since the board will sell only in the thousands, and will not get any serious software support.  The Teron board on which the AmigaOne board is based is already out of manufacture -- and the OS hasn't even been released, yet!  If Amiga Inc. does anything with DE, support for AmigaOne will be dropped as soon as possible.  

At least Macs give you the latest standards and newest PowerPC chips.  The AmigaOne really has nothing to offer that hasn't already been done on PC's three years ago.  PC's can use external USB2.0 hard drives.  Will AmigaOne do that?  Sure, if you spend extra money on a USB2.0 card, which doesn't exist, and probably never will.

And let's not forget that many Amiga standards aren't even supported by the AmigaOne.  I have a 1200, and support for a floppy drive is a must so I can use all my old software again.  How do I use Amiga floppies in an AmigaOne?  Buy a 3rd party floppy controller, of course!  How silly of me to think that Amiga floppy disks would be supported on Amiga hardware.  Macs can do away with the floppy drive since they've been as dependent on hard drives as Windows.  Many old Amigans are not so fortunate.  Besides, having a floppy drive on a PC is a choice, and it's practically free.  Being forced not to use one unless you buy expensive hardware is pretty stupid.  $100 USB floppy drives that you can't use as boot devices?  Please...

AmigaDE was, and is, the only thing that still interests me.  I won't be upgrading Windows any time soon, anyway, so I can certainly wait for it. If DE never sees the light of day, then I'll just have to wait for something else, and I don't see anything else over the horizon.

Basicly, by stance on the Amiga is that there's a lot of good functionality in AmigaOS that's going to waste.  The OS itself is dead.  The only thing that really has potential is Workbench.  It frightens me how much people fight over AmigaOS, but speak little about Workbench.  I bought an Amiga 1000 many years ago not because of Shadow of the Beast, but because of Workbench.

People obsess over the boing ball.  Why?  Boing just demonstrated the graphical power of the OCS chipset.  Workbench is what allowed you to do anything useful!  I think the Workbench checkmark logo is a far better corporate icon than the checkered ball.

If I were going to make a new OS, I'd license QNX as the core, make a new desktop based heavily on Workbench, and make a scriptable, networkable GUI language, so you could easily write your own architecture-independent applications (Citrix, anyone?)

Amiga, and anyone else, can still do that, but I doubt Amiga Inc. has the insight to pull it off.  Besides, we all know Amiga is owned by TAO, so the future of Amiga depends on what TAO wants to do with the machine.  That might not even have anything to do with desktop computers!  Since when have we heard anything from Amiga Inc. about future software?  Hyperion is the only company that seems to be releasing any information at all.

Anyone who thinks Windows will roll over and die anytime soon has some screws loose.  I don't see anyone else with a promising product besides Apple, and I don't like their business practices.  I hate Windows, but Amiga, and everything else, does not impress me in the slightest.

The future looks bleak, if you ask me.

[Waccoon]

Picasso_41:  I will move to the Mac, if I can decide which one to buy.

iMac, really expensive iMac with PCI slots, or stripped down iMac for your lap.  Shouldn't be too hard.

Sorry, I just really hate the Mac's form factor.  The towers are just iMacs in $500 cases (although if you spend more, they'll give you a faster processor, and a non-MX graphics card.  Wow.)