Everyone in this thread needs to calm down a bit.
While I think the approach used by CHR_ZD is a bit improper, he does have some very valid points. OS 3.9, and presumably 4.0 can no longer be considered "user friendly" unless you are in fact willing to dedicate years of your life to learning the little eccentricities that make it special.
Every other modern OS, including Linux, now include most of the software you'll need, in an auto-install point and click fashion, right on the CD. AmigaOS is still just AmigaOS and if you want to actually do anything with it, you have to go through the same crap tribal ritual CHR_ZD did, trying to install 3 different programs just to get one damned thing to work.
I know my words and opinion won't be popular with most of the purehards here, but the original poster does have his points. The fact that 4.x still requires stupid crap like MUI (or whatever it's competitor was) rather than having it built into the OS as a standard for all developers to code to is (IMHO) ... well, the term pathetic comes to mind.
I might have understood it if OS4 was a direct port that was available to the public in 2001, but NOT after 5 years of development. I'm not trying to slam anyone here, so don't get your panties in a wad, I'm just pointing out facts. Hell, BeOS, Mac OSX, or even Windows XP didn't take 5 years to write and it still had publicly available and good hardware around when it did.
Now... On the other hand, people like Amigadave have a point, in that AmigaOS isn't a modern OS. It requires you to actually sit and wade through the now-obfuscated process to get even basic s*it to work. If you're not open minded, learning AmigaOS is incredibly frustrating and a real pain in the ass. If you are open minded, it comes easily.
However, expecting an Operating system from 1985 (or even OS 3.9's 1998/99) to work as flawlessly and user friendly as Windows XP and MacOSX is quite unrealistic. If you want to learn it, cool. If not, cool. Your choice.
Wayne