Someone DID ask--Well. . .commented. . .

Sorry dude. I LOVED my Amiga. I STILL tell people about the machine that had a true multitasking os that fit on a couple diskettes back when the real pc os ran off a command line and if you wanted to use a mouse, you juggled two dozen disks during the installation. I had 4K colors and stereo sound right out of the box, and everything just WORKED, back when everyone spent hundreds of dollars on sound and video cards that got them 256 colors and every game they installed was a nightmare of choosing cryptic codes that MAYBE resulted in a viewable screen and sounds other than beeps and buzzes.

But Commodore never understood what they had, and big business was blue and Commodore played "Me Too!" till the Chinese (literally) raided the abandoned factory. I read Amiga forums on GENIE and took whatever downloads were available for my NETWORK of a Ami3000 and my daughters Ami500 every day until one day I saw a mac and a PC displaying live (more or less) video from each others video cameras--something that my Amiga couldn't do, and the writing was on the wall.

I waited until W95 was available, but I spent a little time on W3.11. And since the night I took a W3 recovery disk and innocently, ignorantly followed the prompts which guided me into inserting "the CD labled. . ." into a healthy happy W95 system turning it into a mutant W95.3.11, and spent the night recovering from it (Convo next day with pc guy "You deleted WHAT? And copied a new one from WHERE?) I've tinkered with PC's, to the point where THAT one, was the last fully assembled, out of the box system I ever bought for myself.

Amigas were my first video out, but PC's were my first TV on a computer. Amiga's were my best dial up bbs experience (GENIE) but PC's were the internet, and video telephone.

My first experiments with 3D mesh and my first 3D prim world building experience happened on an Amiga, but but the PC took me to Alpha World WAY back in the late 90's and I could finally see and talk to other people in the house I built.

Now. . .yeah, I've got a tricked out Windows box in front of me. But I can boot it into Linux too, and among the pile of curious technology that's made its way to my desk there's an N800 network tablet (made by a mobile phone maker) that gives me video conferencing in my pocket, and an older EEE that also runs linux, that I was able to take a soldering iron to and HACK for the first time in decades; and some self assembled hardware, including a tiny little processor, which taken all together is a tiny tracked robot named "Ardi" for reasons that may or may not be perfectly clear to you.

Yes, I've served a dark master for the past two decades, and I was well rewarded. But I begin to see the cracks in THIS empire too--as people begin to realize it's not the hardware or the OS, or even the specific applications, but rather, the files that move from one system to the other--regardless of the names on any of the individual boxes--that has allowed us to do what the "phone company" promised but never delivered for years with a $10 video camera. And gave us the power to shake another evil empire to it's knees till they crucified Shawn Fanning for our sins.

Obligatory question that makes this legal for the forums (where i've decided it will be posted, tho it started out as a PM reply):

Do you suppose Mark or Phil understand what I'm talking about? I dunno about mark--he seems to be as blue as they come. But Phil probably does. Second Life runs on the three most popular desktop OS's. Even the rebel/hacker one. And I'm not talking about you mac users. These days you may as well be blue too.

I'm sorry Jay. I really did try. You can punish me when we meet on the other side.

And as for Argent--Hate me if you must, but I'm still gonna fly your plane. I recognize good technology when I see it.

/me still misses my C64.

The simplicity of shoving in a disk and doing what you needed to do without the hassells of viruses, spyware, runaway security permissions(aka Vista), reformatting hard drives, defragging, or any of the other crap we all cope with nearly daily is a fondly remembered dream.

Sadly gone are the days of sitting down, doing what you came to do, and walking away.

Edit:
Come to think of it that's a metaphor for my second life as well. Gone are the days of simple discovery and building without the lag, bugs, griefers, and lost inventory.

Amiga, huh. You Amiga people are crazy.

I got my Mac 128k when i was 11. And i used to ride the bus to school, and i remember some kid over heard me talking about my Mac with another Mac owner and he came over to us and from that day forward it was AMIGA AMIGA BLITTER CHIP RULES MAC SUCKS, BLITTER BLITTER CHIP CHIP AMIGA!

He was in my face everyday for a full school year going on and on about the Amiga and that damn Blitter Chip and how super awesome it was...But yet no Amiga's ever showed up anywhere. It was such a lame year for bus riding because of that nerd.

Uh. . .fwiw, he was right.

Jay Miner stuffed the Amiga with all sorts of incredible little sub processors, that did the work so the main processor didn't have to. He based the timing on standard video signals. Back when mac people were discovering desktop publishing Amiga folks were doing desktop video. If you had followed that kid home one day and spent some time on his Amiga, your monochrome mac wouldn't have been quite so cool any more.

Why did no one ever hear about the Amiga? Because in order to keep it alive at all, the designers dropped the hard drive and half the memory and sold the idea to the bean counters as a video game machine. With no hard drive, in the face of the IBM XT, frankly the Amiga didn't stand a chance in the business world.

And then there was the almost non existant marketing. One thing the Amiga certainly taught me--and I've seen it happen time and time again--Technological superiority doesn't stand a chance when it's up against good marketing. Try selling Iphones in Japan.

But as I stated above, I haven't counted myself among Amiga users in over 20 years. I mentioned the Amiga in passing in another post, and in an entirely different context. I've seen businesses pull mac networks out and replace them with PC networks when the macs couldn't keep up. Tho, they finally came back when mac os picked up SAMBA, which was pioneered by linux people. Macs can emulate windows now. A friend of mine built an Amiga system back in the 80's that had hardware emulation of an AT clone and whatever the current mac was at the time.

But my message wasn't "My computer was better than yours." I started out reminiscing about a very cool computer, and ended up saying "Isn't it nice we can all play together now?" Tho, admittedly not in so many words.

BTW, since I have you in a post, I want to congratulate you on your most excellent proportions post, and even tho I only have eyes for Lil, offer a nod of appreciation for that teeny bikini you were almost wearing at the Cartel party last night.

There, now you can all gang up on me over my sexist remark and leave the Amiga rest in peace. Or pieces.

In the UK, the first Amigas _were_ marketed as small business machines - and the majority of commentary they got was about how insane it was to pay for a machine with such sophisticated graphics and sound when you were just going to use it for word processing.

It seems they couldn't win