Still using an Amiga....
Some of you will have read on the Ripper mailing list about my little bit of bad luck with my Amiga the other day. The blasted thing blew up in my face. This would have been the perfect opportunity for me to leave the platform, and get a PC instead, right? Yeah, right. But I didn't. I am typing this editorial on a brand-new Amiga, upgraded my petty 1.x GB harddrive to a 4.3 GB one (no matter how large a harddrive is, you will always fill it up sooner than you think), and am in the process of reinstalling all software I can find.
Forget about backups of software on safe places. Without ever touching them, the original disks stored in a safe place have become corrupted, CD's have developed read errors without me ever touching them, and the zip I was using to make regular backups was connected to my miggy when the accident happened. So, not even a backup of recent files. But, that aside. This is not the story for an editorial.
The question is, why did a sane person (I like to see myself as one) stick with a dead platform, when he had a chance to change it? Was it the Amiga feeling?
Yes. But what is the Amiga feeling? Is it the ease of use, the fact that you can upgrade it from a simple home-computer to a powerPC monster? No. The Amiga feeling consists for 99% of you and I. It's the people who use it, that make the computer special. We have never followed the Gates crowd, and most of us are proud of it. No good software? Some students decide to write their own, rather than bow for mighty mr. Gates. Need help? Any mailing list will help you out, no matter how "stupid" your question is. Need help on software? Most mailinglists for software are read by the authors of the software themselves, who will happily help you out if you have problems.
But isn't the Amiga the best computer around? Let's be realistic, it's not. Period. Almost all other offerings are better (and remember: W*nd*ws is not a computer, it's just an operating system!). The times when we could be proud to have the best homecomputer around have been long gone.
How about the future? Well, hardware like it seems unlikely we see some revolutions any time soon. But all of a sudden batches of long awaited software appear everywhere. IBrowse and Voyager, both with JavaScript, PageStream 4.0 (read our review in the next issue, place your order now!), ImageFX 4.0 and more. Seems like some developers still believe in the Amiga-feeling.
That's the point of my little rant: all of us who have not done so until now, it's time to start rewarding them developers. By this, I don't mean we should buy everything we see, but: we should buy every piece of software we use on a regular basis. Pricing for Amiga-software is low, and there is no reason at all to keep on pirating, or borrowing copies. The people developing are often one-man companies, running a full time job/study, while programming in their spare time. And what do we do? Complain that it isn't up to the specs of great software developers on other platforms! Hey, if we paid them the money, they could do it for a living, and work 24 hours a day on our programs.
Even now, we see an unbelievable support from developers for us: Voyager comes out with one update a week, IBrowse has been updated quite some time, PageStream 4 is shipping, but updates are already appearing, before we even had a chance to complain. And for what? For what little money there is left for the developers. Listen to Wolf Faust, of Studio-Print, telling he knows of about a hundred users of his program. This means, a hundred registered users. How many are using it in real life? They've supported us long enough, let's support them as well!
Enuf for today, going for a glass of whisky.....