Buying SAM 460 to replace my PC

[bloodline]

I can't understand why people from this community tries to talk people away from buyiny a NG Amiga??? If you are a genuine Amiga user you would want to get more people away from the PC!

I think people here want to make sure that other forum memeber get the best deal, and enter into a situation with their eyes wide open. That's why I trust the guys here.

If the original poster really wants to get a Sam then nothing is stopping him, and I'm pretty sure he will enjoy it. But he asked a specific set of questions and got some honest answers.

[Thorham]

I can't understand why people from this community tries to talk people away from buyiny a NG Amiga??? If you are a genuine Amiga user you would want to get more people away from the PC!

I'm an Amiga user, but not an 'NG Amiga' user. Someone has a pc which probably works perfectly well for it's intended use, and then they want to down grade to a SAM? Yes, I have to advice against that. They'd end up with a less capable browser and less video playing performance (as far as I know). For the price of a SAM you can probably get a pc that has full hd playback capability.

I'm not going to advise people to get less for more.

[bitman]

But he's not considering buying another PC, he's considering buying a SAM.

People make choices - and people who buys MAC's also pay more for less - but that's their decision.

[bitman]

But he asked a specific set of questions and got some honest answers.

Problem is we're all biased in someway. I can not give him the right answer, since I'm biased too.

Only people who can give a honest answer is other 460 owners. Some of them af for sure happy about their 460, and some are probably not

[zylesea]

@ AmigaClassicRule

Better get a Powermac G4/mini/powerbook and set up a dual boot system of MorphOS and OS X.
Benefits:
- MorphOS is more polished than OS4
- hardware is reasonable fast and cheap
- decent browser is alsready avaialble
- Mplayer port is more polished
- OS X will fill all those gaps MorphOS still has.

Sam460 is new, but a bit slow and rather expensive. OS4 is not as advanced as MorphOS and crucial software as browsers or Mplayer is not as polished as the MorphOS pendants.
It's an easy decision.

[Thorham]

But he's not considering buying another PC, he's considering buying a SAM.

I know that, which is why I advised him to keep his money in his pocket in my first post.

[psxphill]

I can't understand why people from this community tries to talk people away from buyiny a NG Amiga??? If you are a genuine Amiga user you would want to get more people away from the PC!

I remember at one of the amiga shows that happened after commodore went under I saw one of the big distributors at the time selling someone a rather expensive ram board for an a1200. The customer was a little slow and the salesman was taking advantage.
 
I bought an Amiga because it was the best for the price, not out of any loyalty. I would only ever recommend someone buying something that was the best for them. If someone decides to spend money on a dream then that is their own lookout, but I wouldn't recommend anyone sink money into Amiga products for anything other than nostalgia.

[Piru]

I will place all my personal data there and also keep it as a safe device to store my programs and applications I am developing

I would seriously recommend using something safer for that. Having no proper memory protection any app writing to a wrong location in memory can screw up the file system. There isn't repair tool available for the file systems, except perhaps FFS. If the HW dies you cannot even access the files if you're using the SFS2 or JXFS.

[Digiman]

But macs can also get viruses...

Maybe not much of a problem now but i predict Apple becoming more of a target as they get more and more popular. Just saying...

OSX has no less bloat than Win7, but Macs cost 200-300% more than PCs.

OSX <> perfect replacement for Amigans IMO.

[Everblue]

"1) No viruses ever on my computer"

Neither on Linux or OSX

"2) No more stupid malware"

Same as above

"3) Faster speed boot time and response time to applications"

What applications?

"4) save in my electric bill as I am using 400+watt power supply but the SAM 460 need only 100 watt to run. Saving a lot in heat and energy."

You can also buy low consuming x86 motherboards which are way more powerful and useful than a SAM460 at a fraction of the price.

If maybe you said "I want to buy a SAM460 because it will let me run Amiga OS4.1" I would understand (albeit at a very expensive price), but none of the reasons you mentioned warrant spending 1000+ Euro.

Just in my very humble opinion of course. =D

[AmigaClassicRule]

"1) No viruses ever on my computer"

Neither on Linux or OSX

"2) No more stupid malware"

Same as above

"3) Faster speed boot time and response time to applications"

What applications?

"4) save in my electric bill as I am using 400+watt power supply but the SAM 460 need only 100 watt to run. Saving a lot in heat and energy."

You can also buy low consuming x86 motherboards which are way more powerful and useful than a SAM460 at a fraction of the price.

If maybe you said "I want to buy a SAM460 because it will let me run Amiga OS4.1" I would understand (albeit at a very expensive price), but none of the reasons you mentioned warrant spending 1000+ Euro.

Just in my very humble opinion of course. =D

Maybe you are right guys. OK. Then what I will do is then save my money up and buy NatAmi then and sell my A1200 when NatAmi is out as the final and ultimate "classic" Amiga hardware upgrades. I will use my PC for all my personal and development reasons and I have not upgraded my PC for over 3 years now and for my usage I am in no need for upgrading for a long time. So my money is indeed saved a lot in hardware expenses, I can enjoy spending on things that benefit me the most: bills, family, games (software), etc.

Thanks all for your genuine advice.

[Duce]

Did not mean to dissuade you from any NG Amiga purchase by any means - as I said, I myself use a SAM as my sole Amiga lately.  But I simply couldn't recommend one as a PC replacement unless your needs were rudimentary to the level of "I check my hotmail and listen to a few MP3's and that's all I need a computer for".  I love my SAM for what it is, but a PC replacement it simply isn't.

My recommendation, honestly - keep your eyes open for a PPC Mac that is compatible with MorphOS.  Heck, around my parts people give the things away.  Download MorphOS demo, give it a whirl and if you enjoy it it can be registered.  If not, you still have a low cost Mac running OS X that is capable of pretty much anything you need it to do.  Or run Linux on it if you dislike OS X or MorphOS, or simply sell the thing off.  Mac Mini's can be had for $100 any day of the week.

In a perfect world, Hyperion would port OS4 to the old PPC Mac's and we could all explore OS4 at a far lower price point, but that won't happen anytime soon.  It's a terrific OS that is locked to extremely costly hardware at the moment.

[itix]

4) save in my electric bill as I am using 400+watt power supply but the SAM 460 need only 100 watt to run. Saving a lot in heat and energy.

While you might save in your electric bill it is going to take several years until you break even.

[dammy]

I can't understand why people from this community tries to talk people away from buyiny a NG Amiga???

It's not an NG Amiga, it's a SAM460 running OS4.

[Thorham]

I myself use a SAM as my sole Amiga lately.

SAMs are not Amigas, when will people understand this? Probably never :lol:

[AmigaClassicRule]

SAMs are not Amigas, when will people understand this? Probably never :lol:

Is the new AmigaOne X1000 then an Amiga or it stands the same probability as Sam460? Thanks in advance.

Hey if I upgrade my Amiga 1200 to Apollo 1260 would it break any gaming comapibility or I would have the same gaming experience as the 030 cpu? Off topic here.