Cause, surfing the net on a phone is the most comfortable, versatile thing ever! Totally streamlined. Do you write most of your hamfisted replies from your phone?
This is supposed to be a computer, not a home theater experience. Watching high res videos is best left to gigantic TVs and home theater equipment.
It isn't like back in the 80s, the C64 or even the Amiga provided you with a home theater experience that outdid your hifi and whatnot either. Unless you had a killer way to play your vinyls on the Amiga, and put a video tape in one.
So why is it crucial that a throwback model does this?
And that is where you haven't left the 80s. PCs no longer cost a fortune, and consoles provide better looking games and usability at a fraction of the cost. Durp? you buy both and stop trying to cram 234923049234 functions into one machine that will end up overheating, being obsolete in 2 years, or breaking when you spill something on it.
computer games weren't cheaper either. some were maybe, but they usually sucked.
also, wrong about what? I said two sentences and you didn't address one. You hardly addressed the other.
Consoles cost the same, and technology gets better so do their games. The same GPUs sold to PC users power the 360/PS3. And as PCs have had games software available since the time of the PET/Vic-20 asking a PC to keep up with a teeny itsy bitsy little 125 bucks console for less than 1k PC tower isn't unrealistic.
You said ... "No. I don't think he did, as it wasn't mentioned in his post. Having an online "arcade" does not mean its competing with a 360 or PS3.
This is a computer, not a video game console."
And this was the reply "He was asked to describe next 'true Commodore' and detailed a machine with lntel Atom CPU which can't even play 720p video files, let alone 1080p 360/PS3 games. I can surf the net on my phone ditto for email/facebook/twitter/youtube/buy crap off ebay.
People play games and watch HD content on 360 for far less....."
Nothing about a throwback to anything which you made up, it's was about a spiritual successor to the Amiga. The whole point was that a spiritual successor to the Amiga today would have to do everything the best consoles do (ie not PS2 looking Wii games) as well as the top end i7 CPU equipped PC. So just like the A500 did in 1987 compared to £200+ Sega console on import and £1000+ for a PC-AT towards 1990. As the original post I was replying to was detailing another member's personal description of a spiritual successor to the Amiga using some rubbish Intel Atom and lame graphics card like a netbook I said this was not suitable.
1. The fact that even a mobile phone can be used to talk on msn/post on facebook/watch youtube/bid on ebay was to show a computer like an Atom based solution being able to do only that, and nothing else, in 2010 is pretty redundant as a next generation anything. I didn't imply anything beyond the fact that a mobile phone has enough CPU power to do all these things you are limited to doing on an Atom based machine. You made a lame attempt to imply I said that (and failed).
2. Did people watch streaming movies/TV shows via their NES/Genesis or PC-XT/AT then in your imagination? Nope so why ask if the Amiga did? Again you were trolling. All people did was play games on consoles and do office work on PCs so all the Amiga had to do in the 80s/90s was play similar games and run similar office software as PCs for less. As a PS3 and 360 both happily play 1080p video and you can't buy non HD TVs anymore I expect it from a 'new Amiga' successor too, naturally, as high end PCs easily playback 1080p too.
3. I also said any new spiritual successor to the Amiga would have to do everything for only 2.5 the cost of a powerful console like a 360. Amiga did everything a PC/Genesis did for 2.5 times the cost of a Sega Genesis/Megadrive even 4 years after the A1000 launched years before the Genesis. Show me a PC for 2.5x cost of the cheapest 360 that can play Alan Wake in 1920x1080x60fps in DX10 even today 4 years after 360s launch date then?
PS Maybe you should email Apple and Youtube and tell them HD is a waste of time, seeing as 360s can't access that content, and they should save themselves a fortune in bandwidth costs by only hosting 360p and 480p videos as PC users aren't interested in HD? It's clear to see the difference between SD and HD quality video on your average 20" monitor/17" notebook screen.
4. You said PCs are not expensive today. Expensive compared to what? Being a bit more intelligent, and comparing like for like, a PC capable of playing PS3/360 quality games will require the following.....
- A graphics card costing somewhere between the cost of a new PS3 and 360.
- A Quad Core or low end i7 CPU costing as much as a PS3.
still leaves motherboard, memory, hard disk, case, PSU, Blu-Ray or DVD drive, copy of Windows etc. Did you fail Maths at school then? Because to me it looks like a PC of similar capability to a 360 is at least 5x as much...same as in 1989/1990 with a 286 vs Genesis console then.
5. There are no overheating issues with the latest high-end ATI/Nvidia cards or the Intel Quad Core Extreme or i7 CPUs. So your claim an all-in-one PC solution overheating is based on what exactly? Cost is the only issue with choosing to not buy a PS3/360 for HD gaming.
6. Console games and PC strategy games were far more expensive than Amiga disk games in the 80s here. NES/Genesis games cost 40-50 bucks and PC games cost the same. Amiga games were 20-25 bucks. Do some research next time.
End of the day there is no excuse, 360 uses Microsoft code running on a PowerPC CPU with a standard ATI GPU from half a decade ago to display games in a quality that costs 4-5x more in PC hardware. And the basic things people do with computers you can still do with an old Pentium III laptop or an iPhone. If there was a spiritual successor to the Amiga it should be 2.5x cost of a 360 and do all these things. There isn't which was the whole point.
So no, there is a difference to how it was, today you can get a console or get a PC costing 5x as much to play the games in the same quality. Your alternative choice is non existent.