To buy or not to buy...

[jj]

No bloodline means get an Iphone  :lol:

[Fixer]

Well Moto, didn't you used to own a PegII with MorphOS on it? What kind of things did you used to do on that?

You might even be able to answer your own question here. ;-)

[bloodline]

JJ wrote:
No bloodline means get an Iphone  :lol:

I'm getting too predictable! :-)

[krize]

Yes but the peg2 os 1ghz, then mplayer works fine on all movies files
and dvd.

But this wont work on the classic as it is too slow.

So what to use OS4 for ? Instead of still use 3.9.

[bloodline]

krize wrote:
Yes but the peg2 os 1ghz, then mplayer works fine on all movies files
and dvd.

But this wont work on the classic as it is too slow.

So what to use OS4 for ? Instead of still use 3.9.

My personal preference would be AfA on OS3.x... With the current rate of AROS progress, it holds a large degree of excitment for me!

[A4000_Mad]

JJ wrote:
No bloodline means get an Iphone  :lol:

He's the only person in the country who has one :lol:

(kidding :-D)


@ moto

Don't listen to that iPhone salesman - get yourself a PPC  ;-)

[motorollin]

@Fixer
Yes you're right, I did used to own a PegII with MorphOS. And I spent a great deal of time configuring it to look and work just like Workbench :roll: In fact, I used my PegII for playing games (using UAE) and surfing the web (under iBrowse). While it was a fun novelty to have a fast, new Amiga-like system, I soon realised that there was nothing I used the PegII for that I can't do under Workbench 3.9.

@bloodline
I also love AfA. But currently it only seems to offer cosmetic improvements to 3.9. If OS4 will actually allow me to do things I can't do with 3.9 then I will consider the CSPPC.

--
moto

[cgutjahr]

motorollin wrote:
So it looks like I have 2 options:

1. Get a CSPPC
a. Use OS4 for whatever people use OS4 for
b. Use OS3.9 for games

If you mainly use your Amiga for games and other retro activities (demos, playing around with old apps - stuff like that) then you better forget about OS4 right now. The limited backwards compatability of OS4 will be a problem for you.

OS4 is for people that (try to) use their Amiga as a modern desktop computer. It runs existing apps faster (slightly faster, it's still just a 200 Mhz CPU), it offers lots of small improvements for everyday use (like the context sensitive popup menus on Workbench, a competent screen manager, AA font display, very good Postscript and PDF viewers, the best TCP stack available to Amiga users etc.) and the amount of utilities and small but useful Unix ports available to you increases a lot.

Some Examples:

After switching to OS4 classic, I'm now running a native version of YAM. If you, like me, often get emails with big attachments, the increased performance of YAM alone makes OS4 a useful purchase.

Thanks to AntiWord and AmiPDF I can now view and print Word documents (including pictures and all formatting) by double-clicking them. I have replaced most of my smaller Apps with PPC native equivalents which are still actively developed, offer more features or run more stable etc. (TuneNet, Organiser, WookieChat, AmiFTP, YAM, AmiDVD...).

I'm now using ppc native, up-to-date and usually more stable ports of dozens of small converter tools from the Unix world. My 68k apps run faster than they did on OS3. Last but not least, the whole thing looks and feels like a product from this century again, not like a badly hacked and patched leftover from the eighties

These are just examples, and I know the list doesn't sound all that impressive - the point is: If you're using AmigaOS daily, you're going to love all these small improvements, they do make a difference.

If you're not an AmigaOS user but a nostalgic Amiga enthusiast (a retro gamer, a hardware fetishist, a member of the demo scene...) or if the computing power of a Cyberstorm doesn't meet your requirements, you're going to be dissapointed.

[SamuraiCrow]

If you want to see what you can run on OS4, why not pay a visit to OS4Depot and see what's been ported to it already.

[motorollin]

Thanks for all the responses. I think I've come to the conclusion that OS4 doesn't offer enough to me yet to justify the expense of the upgrade. I just know I'm going to end up feeling disappointed, since as cgutjahr so succinctly put it, I am a retro gamer and hardware fetishist, not someone trying to use my Amiga as my main computer.

Thanks again!

--
moto