What was the first software when you went PC or Mac?

[issarad]

For me it was mostly a matter of games at first.  When things stopped being ported to the Amiga, I started looking at PC's.  Then came the Internet and that was that... the poor Amiga was relegated to the small desk, but is still used to this day for some old school gaming, along with it's older brother, the C-128.

[amigadave]

Hi I'm wondering what software was giving you platform envy. So much so your Amiga got knocked off the winners podium and replaced with a PC or Mac. What titles/applications did you rush out and purchase?

I think it was the fact that there were no Amiga laptops, as my first non-Amiga computer that I purchased was a 400mhz Celeron off brand laptop.  That plus my growing curiosity about Linux and the end of Compuserve's support of the Amiga application "AutoPilot".

Later I needed a Windows capable x86 to run TurboCAD (as I refused to pay the price for AutoCAD).

I am thankful that I only had to put up with Windows 3.1 through Windows95 at work and my first version of Windows on a home computer was Windows98, which was much less trouble than previous versions.  (Win3.1 on my 386sx Bridgeboard in my A2000 was horrible and kept me on the Amiga bandwagon for years longer than might have been)

[AndyFC]

Microprose F1 GP2. F1GP was my favourite Amiga game and, on the Amiga, I bought a set of pedals and updated the cars etc with some software, which I forget the name of now (it also allowed me to run at 25 fps as I had a 1230 MK-IV). I even got a letter published in CU Amiga telling people about how to update this game!

[mingle]

My first PC s/w (in 1998, I think) was Win98SE... Was a bit of a revelation after struggling with Workbench.

One of the first programs I used was PaintShop Pro. I still use it (version 7.04, since it went all "photoshoppy" after that!)...

Also installed Office, etc... So much free (and good) software available...

On XP SP3 at the moment...

All freebies too... Had access to corporate editions of all of the above. Apart from that all of my other software is shareware/freeware...

Mike.

[bloodline]

A whole bunch of music programs and audio editors... MS Office... but the big step up was Internet Explorer, that was dramatically better than Voyager.

[Darrin]

Civilization 2 on a 120MHz Packard Bell Pentium running Win95.

[stefcep2]

Any decent web browser, and Acrobat reader.  If I had these, my 68060 A4000 would still by my main machine.

[xeron]

It wasn't any software. I resisted having a PC at home until my job wanted me to do some work from home, and they gave me one. This wasn't until 2005. Since then I have bought 2 laptops.

[coldfish]

For me, it was having to write assignments for University back in 1994.  I couldnt afford a good printer so I'd write my work at home and take them on floppy to be printed.  The print server couldnt read Amiga disks and my Amiga had no word processing software so it was a cheap used 386 with Word on Win3.1 for me.
Interestingly, that machine felt much faster (25Mhz) than my A500, it was a fairly painless upgrade, I kept the A500 for games and the PC for work, they were apretty good team.

[ElPolloDiabl]

@above
The 386 was slightly superior in performance to 68030. The other advantage of the intel chips was that they could clock a lot higher. Having a 20Mhz processor instead of a 7mhz processor made a lot of difference in those days. The Amiga's  superiority was in arcade style games.

[guest7146]

My preference is to use my Amiga for general computing.  However, there are indeed many situations in which I am forced to use the PC due to applications that are not supported on our platform.  These are:

1. Microchip MPLAB and associated compiler tools
2. National Instruments Labview
3. National Instruments Multisim
4. Mathworks Matlab
5. Cadsoft Eagle
6. Microsoft Office (throw vegetables at me if you like but MS Office is actually very powerful! OpenOffice would be a good alternative except for the fact that there's no support for VBA.  Which to me is important.  However, if Open Office were available on the Amiga I'd use it for general documents)

And that's it really.  It's unfortunate that pretty much all of the Engineering tools I need/use are only available on the PC.  Even the MAC suffers from a lack of some of the applications I mentioned, so getting them on the Amiga just to satisfy me isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Still... The Amiga takes pride of place and is used as much as possible.

Apple Hammer

[gertsy]

Trax, Studio 5, Browsing.
And of course Doom II, Quake II and Counter Strike.

Gertsy

[pVC]

I never went to PC or Mac. But MorphOS gave me software my original Amiga wasn't capable for (playing movies namely).

[Cool_amigaN]

I went accidentally on the PC. I was supposed to upgrade a stock A1200 but I got a present of a PC with Chaintech Mobo, Pentium 133Mhz, 1.2GB HD, CD24x, Win95, ATI 4MB Ram.

Anyway, I can't really regret that I swift to PC. Win where unstable just like w.b. 3.1 when was heavily patched and some apps could bring both systems down. But, OTOH, I could browse sufficient the web with Netscape and I could play games that didn't exist on Amiga and/or even if they could be ported, they would be slow like snail. For example, Carmageddon, Phantasmagoria, Age of Empires (I played through Zone as well back then!) and QuakeII (I had to upgrade to a Viper GFX of 32Mbs 2 years later).

Also, I was 12-13 years old and I couldn't really persuade my parents to upgrade my stock A1200 for the same (if not more!) amount of money and couldn't get equal results when compared to the brand new PC.

[dammy]

Red Hat 6.

[Amiga_Nut]

I first had to use, and therefore purchase, a PC in late 94 I think, after my A1200 v1 purchase anyway. What a rude awakening that was. First impressions were Win 3.1 is WORSE than Workbench 1.1 or Gem v1 on the ST. Where the hell is the logical/physical location relationship the GUI of what is on your hard disk.  And it got worse, the file system was WORSE than a Commodore PET from the 70s! 8.3 format was pathetic. Sure Dbase IV was fine for programming but that file system got right on your nerves VERY quickly. And I used Dpaint for all my assignments and projects because Photoshop even then was ineffectual bloatware and there was nothing as simple and effective as using Dpaint in super high rez and printing 1:1 with a bubblejet printer.

And then there was all the pathetic messing about to get enough memory! You have 4mb on board, app/game says not enough memory. You need to do all this geeky rubbish to maximise the dinosaur memory map of 640k >1mb >rest. And then you need the right kind of extra memory like EMS/XMS etc gahhh what a piece of shit.

But as others have said there was no new Amigas, the CD32 was a waste of time (inferior hardware STILL to the SNES/Megadrive...why bother?) and Escom were pimping 1992 (too little too late) Technology in the 96 market place. 4 years is the difference between C64 and Amiga for god's sake!

I found the games anal and boring and lacking any kind of excitement, the only decent PC game was Super Stardust, but as it was a lot less hassle to play it on my A1200 AND PC joysticks were a joke...erm. Games like Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle were boring and required a sound card costing more than a 2nd hand A1200 at the time, what a joke.  Wing Commander was pathetic, and Doom became boring very quickly for me.

Nope the only thing I wanted from the PC world in the mid 90s on my Amiga was a FAST serial port for 56k modems (bloody Commodore penny pinching) and Netscape 3. That's it, nothing else. And even to this day I don't care for OS X or Vista (or service pack 7 for Vista AKA Windows 7). But as someone else said there was no Amiga, no development, no Commodore, it was a false choice.

Amiga was like a fearless warrior of Conan proportions who died alone and penniless in a cancer hospital ward....PC was a weakling of a bespectacled spotty kid with a rich daddy and a sever infection of the luck virus. And that my friend is how I imagine 99% of intelligent Amiga users who had no choice but to get a PC felt. Sad end to a glorious amazon warrior.

YMMV