Why keep suffering?

[A1260]

It saddens me to see the state of affairs. Back in 1987 or so, I had a Mac Plus, and I went to a friend's house. He had an Amiga, with full color graphics. He even played me a sound file. I even remember it was "Land Of Confusion" by Genesis. It would be another 10 years before I even saw a stereo sound file played on a home computer again.

I felt like my Mac Plus was an abacus in comparison to my friend's Amiga.

Sadly, 20 years later, incompetence and greed have completely destroyed the platform, while its inferior siblings, Mac OS and Windows, live on.

To be a fan of Amiga nowadays is to be a masochist. To have your platform of choice in the hands of incompetent pseudo companies and greedy lawyers must be just painful. At what point do you decide that it's time to move on?

As a Linux user, for all its shortcomings, at least I know that stupid executives and lawyers have very little chance of killing my OS.

[Jeff]

Lots of us have moved on. Many of us use Windows, Linux, and Mac OS machines in addition to our old Amigas. All of the classic Amiga's in my collection are still used occasionally and they are still more fun for me to use than the old XT or 286 I had at the time I bought my first Amiga. It instantly takes me back 10 or 20 years every time I boot one of them up. That's one of the reasons I keep them all. They are still incredible machines, just not compared to todays multiple gigahertz quad core computers.

The platform is in our hands now. It's old, obsolete, outdated, and still very much fun to use. We don't need the parent companies support anymore. We have been doing without them since 1994 or before. New projects like the Mini-Mig will continue to develop as long as we have interest. Projects like AROS and WinUAE will make sure we can run the classic OS long after the last of our old hardware finally dies if we still want to.

It is sad that most of us can't use OS4 and probably won't ever see it run on our own machines. I was really looking forward to buying it. Perhaps someday when it is so old that no one cares anymore we will finally be able to try it out:-)

Jeff

[Plaz]

At what point do you decide that it's time to move on?

I think there's a vast misperception out there about the remaining Amiga hobbiest. We have moved on. I'd have to wager 99% of the members here use one or multiple choices of Mac, *nix, and windows as part of everyday life. Sure, many of us daydream of an Ami comeback, but suprise... we're realist too. We're using all the other platforms out there daily. And not holding our breath about comebacks.

It's not much different than other groups and message boards about 8 bit Atari, commodore, Mame arcade cabinets and game consoles. Many hang around because the old hardware is fun and they've made friends that come back to chat. Some here don't even own Amigas anymore.

In each of these other example groups you don't have questions about... "when are you going to give it up".. "get real"..."join the real world"..."get a real OS" ... when you can make just as good or better case about them using "dead" systems. Some where out there Amigas gained the labels of "zealots", "religious", "crazy". And that's fine by me. We know it's not true, and anyone who spends a bit of time will see too. For me it just makes it that much more fun to be in the gang. Sure there are a few eccentrics, but find me a group of any thing anywhere that doesn't have the same.

Maybe things like AROS, MorphOS or some other Amiga-like OS will fill the gap, and we like to chat all that up. But we know the reality all too well.

PS. Dang, Jeff beat me to some of the same retorts. :-)

Plaz

 

[Steril707]

A1260 wrote:

As a Linux user, for all its shortcomings, at least I know that stupid executives and lawyers have very little chance of killing my OS.

Sounds like an ad for AROS...  :-D

If you like the way Linux is handled (by the open source movement), you will love AROS.

And with some appliance of themes and icons, it even looks quite "Amiga-ish"  :-) .


Lookie here: www.sendlingboogiebreaks.de/amiga.png

(this using Ken's Icons, and d980's Retrowhite Theme)

Keep the faith,
Mike  :kitty:

[Tomas]

I will always have it as a hobby, no matter what happens.. I just hope my classic gear survives for another 20 years  :-P

[Tomas]

As a Linux user, for all its shortcomings, at least I know that stupid executives and lawyers have very little chance of killing my OS.

We will see when trusted computing has been activated fully. ;(
My personal belief is that the x86 platform will be locked down like a console in less than 20 years from now, as they are already working on it from what i have read. It will probably first start with the OS refusing to playback non trusted media files, then applications and so on.. It has already started with non trusted drivers on vista 64bit afaik.

[Hodgkinson]

Oh dear.
(Personally I think it started with XP/2K with all of these background processes that run without us ever clicking an .exe, typing “run” or editing a *user friendly* startup-script)

And I thought our admin-controlled school computer system was bad.

The odd thing is that I've grown up with x86 Microsoft PC's, and now im into amigas. I suppose it a way to say "Not everything has to be Microsoft" - I use my main A1200 for Amateur radio data comms in the shack, though it has been in bits for the past 6 months having various clean-ups and upgrades.

Hodgkinson.

[thanos]

We will see when trusted computing has been activated fully. ;(

I agree with you, I think we can count on M$ and Apple to continue to try to lock it all down.

I think that we do have other avenues available.

I have recently started to play with Ubuntu.  I have a setup in the works that seems to be a suitable replacement for M$, thanks VLC and FireFox.

I hope to see many options continue to become and remain available.  I like the idea of having a choice.

On a side note my car, daily driver, is even older than my Amigas, 84 VW Rabbit.

my $.02

[Gilloo]

A1260 wrote:
To be a fan of Amiga nowadays is to be a masochist.

Never been a fan at all.
Amiga was, is, (will ?) and still the machine simple to learn computer science, algorithm improvement, hardware study, and sometimes to play games :-)

[benJamin]

Who's suffering?!  I'll never move on!  My classic machines may need maintenance, but there will always be emulation, and MiniMig!

(My Linux box just decided to crap out on me and crashed every application when I pressed a key, fun huh?  At least on AOS I generally knew what /I/ had done to cause the crash... sheesh!)

It's fun for me, and the folks on the boards I have had the pleasure of reading and being helped by, even for non-Amiga related questions. :-D

So, in short, I've never felt a slave to the corporate machine, I've tried to help the community where I can (Cloanto can have my money any day) and generally enjoy the creative past-times afforded by my Amiga.

Linux is for Uni., Windows is for work, Amiga is, and always has been, for play (no Spanish puns intended).


jaminJay
"Amiga.org - The site for MiniMig support and news." :crazy:

[Shamus_]

To be a fan of Amiga nowadays is to be a masochist.

A bit harsh, innit? Should we get rid of all the things that still give us enjoyment based purely on their age? I know my missus would be p!ssed if I traded her in for a newer model. The same thing applies to a classic car or heritage building.   What about a kit car and a classic Shelby Mustang? Being newer, the kit car might be better from an engineering perspective. It might not be. The point is that age has nothing to do with enjoyment.

I suppose I should go and set fire to my collection of LPs. Afterall, having them on CD would be better, wouldn't it?

[Einstein]

Steril707 wrote:

And with some appliance of themes and icons, it even looks quite "Amiga-ish"  :-) .


Lookie here: www.sendlingboogiebreaks.de/amiga.png

(this using Ken's Icons, and d980's Retrowhite Theme)

Mike  :kitty:

That looks like heaven to me, imagine running "Fire & Ice" or "Monkey Island" in window there.  :angel:

[TheMagicM]

Why keep suffering?

Only people who are clinging on for the next coming of the Amiga are the ones suffering.  I lost interest in any new Amiga (does not count Pegasos + MOS) many years ago.  I use it because its fun even though most of my stuff is in storage (except for my trusty A500 and A2k).

[guru-666]

you have it all wrong.  If you are just now figuring out that the amiga is not the most efficient machine you need to coma out form the rock you live under.  The amiga is a hobby machine at this time.  While it may be possible to work only on the amiga it's silly in 2007.  Anyway I still enjoy my amigas... as a hobby as something different.

[amigakid]

I love my Miggy's and even though they are dated who needs to move on.  I have other computers like PC's, laptops 2 Imac's and 1 PowerMac so I am not missing anything 'New' to say.  I still prefer my Amiga to all of them with the exception of web browsing and a few other things.  Anyways the Amiga is still the most fun and in my opinion the best systems out there.

Cheers!!!