$ff8|1-Moan moan moan... $fbb Dr.Dick has a grumble, Be a pal and pass the Scumble... $fbf Bloody Amiga owners getting up my fecking nose again, Bootblock and Co who reckon the Amiga is a mainstream machine and that it can hold it's own against the mighty software juggernaut that is the PC and the nippy little games hatchback that is the Playstation. A recent E-mail thread saw Bootblock arguing for the Amiga, and everyone else telling him to stop being stupid, but would he have it? Nooooo. He hates the PC (although he never tells us why) and insists he's going to buy "a 250Mhz PowerPC card wih an 040 and load of RAM" because it will be better than simply selling his A1200 and getting a PC. Unfortunately for us sane people, he is not alone in thinking this. Why bother? Most software on the Amiga runs perfectly well with a bit of Fast RAM, only the FPU intensive stuff like rendering packages need better than that. There's little point in competing with the PC on the utility battlefield because that's where all the development is, and no point in entering the Games arena aginst the Playstation for exactly the same reason, so where on earth is the Amiga actually going to fit it? It's a hobbiest machine these days. Nobody in their right mind would build up an Amiga system for serious use when there are much faster and cheaper machines to do the same job and with better support, but take a trip to #amirc on DALnet IRC and you'll run into 2 dozen Amiga users who will try to convince you otherwise. Say you want a decent multimedia computer, what will you buy? Consider the following machines: PC: 166Mhz CPU, Amiga: A1200/50Mhz 040 2Mb graphics card, 2Mb Chip RAM 16Mb RAM, 8Mb fast RAM 2Gb harddisk, 2Gb Harddisk SVGA monitor, Philips Monitor 16-bit sound, Built-in sound 16-speed CD-ROM. 16-Speed CD PC: Case, Motherboard, CPU, soundcard, gfx card, floppy - £180 Amiga: Basic A1200 - £200 So for £20 LESS, you get a more powerful machine, and that's before you add the price of the accelerator card. PC: SVGA Monitor (up to 1024x768) - £100 Amiga: Philips Monitor (Up to 1024x512) - £130 Because so many are made, a decent monitor will cost you £30 less than a lower-resolution (and still flickering) monitor for the Amiga. You can, of course, buy a SVGA for your A1200, but then you'll need a nice new (expensive) adaptor or cable. PC: 2Gb harddisk - £117.50 Amiga: 2Gb harddisk + cables - £132.50 Yup, wrong-sized IDE connector means the cheapest way to get a big HD is to get a custom-made cable for the job - another £15 on top. Want an internal IDE CD-ROM? Then you'll have to shoe-horn that big Amy motherboard into a tower case, another £30, add a buffered IDE connector for another £35, an A4000 keyboard and connector for £40 and then sort out the nightmare of wiring at the back. At least you won;t need that IDE cable any more. No matter how you look at it, the Amiga is more expensive to maintain than the PC these days. Granted, when the A1200 came out it was better than the PC at a lower price, but all that has changed, big time! And don't go trying to tell me how most people have their Amigas on a telly and so don't need a monitor (if you want to put up with a shit picture, fine, don't complain to ME when you get eyestrain), or have them plugged into the HiFi for better sound (like PC owners can't do this?), because it just don't wash no more, man. And as for saying the games are cool, oh PLEASE! Why have all the major games manufacturers halted production on major Amiga releases if it's so damned assured? The Playstation costs just £130 and comes with two good controllers - the sort that cost £35 on the PC - into the bargain. Chip it and you get awesome quality games for a tenner (Oh come on Amiga boy, are you telling me you PAID for CygnusEd and XCopy?), the sort of thing that needs a massive PC with a 3DFX card. So, Playstation for games and PC for serious stuff, why bother arguing about how good the Amiga is when this is obviously not the case? Dr.Dick Spoiling for a good debate. end