Ahhh.. sweet, sweet memories.
My first Amiga was an amazing Amiga 500. I bought it back in late 1989, early 1990. This was just prior to starting college to study computing. I had been working on a `work placement` at the company I otherwise only worked weekends at, full time for a few weeks, and earned just enough to splash out on a nice new computer. I didn't have any computers before that except a second hand ZX Spectrum 16 which had been expanded to 48k. We occasionally borrowed my uncles Amstrad CPC464 which had a few fun games on it.
While some other people thought I should've bought a leather jacket or whatever, the Amiga was certainly an amazingly cool thing to get. It seemed almost mystical as being one of the only systems with a mouse at the time, back when computer mice were not at all commonplace. I thought it was amazing alone just because it had a mouse. But what sold me on the Amiga? I very almost would've bought an Atari. But, upon seeing an ad in a very early Amiga magazine, I saw paint programs running on both the Amiga and the Atari. Even though the Atari was.. ooh, 300 uk pounds at the time, the Amiga was 400 uk pounds, looking at the Amiga screenshot I just couldn't help but be thoroughly enthused, especially with how the Amiga was described and what this paint program could do.. ... Of course, it was Deluxe Paint. At the time, that was version 2, and it looked so amazing, it is what sold me rather than opting for *any* other platform including pc or mac.
So I bought an Amiga 500, it had 1/2 meg chipmem. I later got a 1/2 meg upgrade and then later a 1 1/2 meg upgrade. I couldn't afford anything more back then because memory expansions were super-amazing peripherals costing hundreds of dollars. The Amiga and me, it was meant to be. My dad couldn't understand how a whole computer could be fitted inside a small little wedge shape like that... and he had seen a lot of electronics in his time since that was his line of work. If I remember rightly, silly me, I switched the Amiga on, and off, at the power supply, in quick succession, in my first attempt to reboot it having screwed something up... and the power supply blew! lol .. well, oh well, a week or two of frustrated waiting later and I was in heaven again. So began the Amiga years, a time of wonderful creativity and fun.