Which Amiga would you recommend to people to buy?

[gimbal]

I never needed the keypad much on the Amiga, except for dungeon crawlers (and one slot machine game). I wouldn't want to play any of those without the numeric keypad.

[ImmortalA1000]

The only non-arcade games I played on my Amiga were pretty much Cinemaware or Magnetic Scrolls titles.

I think the numpad is a bit of a problem for shortcuts on some serious/creative software. Once you know all the Dpaint III keyboard shortcuts etc it's annoying to the creative process hunting through the menus to do it over and over. Flight Simulators used loads of keys too but I never played those, flat polygons was never my cup of tea.

[daxb]

I wouldn't buy a keyboard/computer without a keypad because it is so useful. HippoPlayer or Protracker without? Hardly to imagine.

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

A 2mb A600 + compact flash adaptor loaded up with WHDload is a great option, I was just recommending the most compatible and cheapest option. It's more about best bang for your buck rather than just the best.

What costs more nowadays the A600 or A500?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

What costs more nowadays the A600 or A500?

Seems like the A600 is more expensive.

[Retro1234]

Prices in general, from a quick look on ebay look

More bang for buck I would have to say A600.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Prices in general, from a quick look on ebay look

More bang for buck I would have to say A600.

Not really, if you can get PI-Storm with A500 for the same price.

And you end up with more compatible Amiga

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Anubis

Not really, if you can get PI-Storm with A500 for the same price.

And you end up with more compatible Amiga

But, but... think about all the stuff™ you can put into an A600!

[Retro1234]

think I need to get a PiStorm to play with....

I guess you can just buy the cheapest model Amiga and put a PiStorm in it?

[TCD]

As far as I understand it the PiStorm (not 32) works with A500, A500+ and A2000 and the PiStorm32(lite) with the A1200.

[CCRider]

Originally Posted by stevelord

(...) If someone grew up with a CD32 (...)

That would've been a sad kid.

[BigD]

Originally Posted by CCRider

That would've been a sad kid.

Not really; a console that you can upgrade to do your homework on! What's not to love?

[Anubis]

Makes you think how many people did homework on cd32, if any.

I moved to Win for school / homework and later for work, like almost everyone else.

[Megalomaniac]

Don't think I ever did anything school-related on an Amiga either, had a Windows 95 PC in time for my GCSE years, although looking back I probably could have done. I did consider heavily upgrading an A1200 for serious stuff and getting a Playstation for games, but I guess I wanted the same system as everyone else for a change.

I still wouldn't want an A600 though. It's about the only Amiga whose limitations can't be completely worked around nowadays (the arrangement of a numeric keypad is deliberate, no other set of keys are neatly square like them, remapping to other keys wouldn't be the same, even if enough keys elsewhere on the keyboard are 'spare').

[Retro1234]

I did just in simple ASCII save to 720kb and import into Word before submitting. I like a lot of people didn't realise I could of upgraded to nice MAC/ShapeShifter quite cheaply.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Don't think I ever did anything school-related on an Amiga either, had a Windows 95 PC in time for my GCSE years, although looking back I probably could have done. I did consider heavily upgrading an A1200 for serious stuff and getting a Playstation for games, but I guess I wanted the same system as everyone else for a change.

I went the upgrading route and used it for plenty of schoolwork, and later, uni work. A second-hand Laserjet III and Wordworth meant I could submit printed reports / essays and what not every bit as good as someone using Word - for my final school engineering project I even included some 3D renders (from Real 3D) of the project I built.

A lot of the uni work was Linux-based, and could be easily handled via telnet and FTP from the Amiga. I had a PC then too for the few tasks that couldn't be done on the Amiga, and only switched to Word in my final year because some submissions were to be in Word format instead of printed, and even then did most of the writing in Wordworth, doing the transfer via the RTF file.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

What costs more nowadays the A600 or A500?

Well if you get an A600 you only need the CF adaptor and a card loaded up with WB and WHDload and that probably costs less than a sought after quality external disk drive but it's still probably the A500 + external drive that's going to be cheaper yes. Then again you do need the 1mb trapdoor expansion for an A600 to run all the OCS 1mb games via WHDload. It's a luxury to have a HDD, even more of a luxury to have AGA and HDD via A1200 too. I'm quite happy to use actual disks on a 3 drive setup like I have with my A1000, the delay loading can build up tension in things like It Came from the Desert and on Sword of Sodan gives you a bit of a break between levels etc I guess.

I honestly haven't checked ebay for Amigas since 2019 when I ended my collecting with a purchase of a lovely boxed Amiga 1000 which was a few miles from my house so I am just assuming some prices.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Don't think I ever did anything school-related on an Amiga either, had a Windows 95 PC in time for my GCSE years, although looking back I probably could have done. I did consider heavily upgrading an A1200 for serious stuff and getting a Playstation for games, but I guess I wanted the same system as everyone else for a change.

I still wouldn't want an A600 though. It's about the only Amiga whose limitations can't be completely worked around nowadays (the arrangement of a numeric keypad is deliberate, no other set of keys are neatly square like them, remapping to other keys wouldn't be the same, even if enough keys elsewhere on the keyboard are 'spare').

I actually used my 520STM from 1986 to do some coursework for A-levels with the bundled 1st Word package, was really nice once I had a software blitter to boot GEM with. I never had anything like Final Writer or Wordsworth because by the time the versions that ran on a 2mb A1200 came out I had no need for word processing. I used mostly graphics packages like Dpaint or Pro Vector I think it was called, it was on a coverdisk anyway.

Once I was at university I really appreciated all the serious stuff on coverdisks. I used Vista and Imagine to do a study on just how far we had come from the Loren Carpenter days of 'you need a mainframe computer' of the 70s to how anybody, with enough patience, could do stunning images with a small outlay for a home computer, not even a top end PC was required for still image work if you knew how to use the packages.

I think I used Kindwords once, not really my thing though in the 80s once I left school.

[desiv]

I did a fair amount of work on my Amiga in college.
Mostly used Transwrite for Word Processing (can't remember where/why I chose that one, but it served me well)...
Eventually got a copy of WP for my Amiga and used that and some crossdos type program (messydos???) to save to PC format floppies when needed.
Most stuff was dialup by then too, so a lot of my file transfers at school were just online.
Telneted to one of the mainframes there from my Amiga to get work done.
And was able to use SLIRP to get a SLIP connection for early internet (FTP mostly).
I remember getting Amiga files from a system in Finland (tut.fi something) and a System in Bath England via FTP back then...
That was all on my A500. Didn't get my 1200 till I was out of college...

[ImmortalA1000]

I have never used any Amiga with any modems or network cards. By the time I had my own house it was all PC ISPs only.

I seem to remember SANA-II drivers from Commodore were the best for broadband?