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{subhead} Disadvantages of being on the internet with an Amiga, Part II{def}{p}
Article by Chris Seward
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 Welcome to the second and last part in the guide to advantages
and disadvantages of using your Amiga over another computer on the
internet. Last issue I looked into the advantages exploring the
world of email viruses that won't effect the Amiga aswell as a whole
host of other things to do with backdoors etc.
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 This issue I will be taking a look at the disadvantages and on a
whole there are alot more disadvantages than advantages. I say this
but there are some advantages so please read last issues article
before you start bombarding me with emails complaining that I have
put the Amiga down when using the 'net. The disadvantages cover
a wide range of topics and span a massive area of computing which is
just not all that easy to sum up in a small article so ofcourse I
will be only looking into some disadvantages.
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 The first area I would like to talk about is support. Support is a
general topic but in specific I am talking about the support you get
from an Internet company. The support is from the day you join a
network to the inbetween support you need when something goes wrong.
The first thing you are going to get when you join up with your
average ISP is software support, this usually is a suite of software
either specially designed for the ISP if they are quite a big company
or at the very least a collection of programs that you can use. The
software support comes on the worldwide computer standard of CD and
will contain your dialup package, web browser (IE if Bill Gates has
his way, he usually does!), email package, irc software, ftp and so
on. These with most ISPs will be set up some way to work with the
company that actually sent you this software. This seems all fine
but we hit our very first problem. The chances that some where on that
CD you will find an Amiga directory or on the cover it will say supports
PC, Mac & Amiga are very slim indeed. I can't speak for any country
outside the UK but here the main ISPs are not on a general note to
bad with providing some Amiga software support, basic it maybe but
you may see some software arrive. The software if Amiga will not be
all to up-to-date either, the ISP have listened to demand and maybe
plucked a few programs of choice of various websites and had no
Amiga in their office to set them up with so will just send you a
complete package of software not designed for use with that ISP or
you will in most cases receive some out of date software that will
be of no help to your Amiga Internet novice like most of us when we
first started out.
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 In 1995 when I first got on the internet I chose the UK company
Demon because at the time they where the up and coming company
and offered a reasonable service for a reasonable price. Way back
then before most Amiga users got access to the internet the Demon
Amiga software collection consisted of a very old version of Thor,
the most basic version of AmiTCP and not alot else. Overall the
software was run through some shell based software which I can't
recall right now and the type of software we see today on the Amiga
was not even a thought at that basic time. I can't really complain
all to much because in 1995 the internet was on its hype trip but
didn't actually atract all to many users. It was BIG then but you
can not imagine how small it was compared to today unless you
actually had access at the time.
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 Going back to my original subject of software support most ISPs
won't offer any support, as I said above the big companies will
but overall you won't get anything. This experience I found when
changing to a new ISP in middle 1998. I had been on and off the
internet for the past few years using various accounts and soon
decided to pick one and settle with it. I was looking for something
cheap because the cheaper the ISP costs the more I could actually
spend to use the internet on the dreaded phone bill. Not so long
ago in the time of July 1998 the free ISPs of today did not exist
and if they did then they where not all to well known. I chose
a very cheap and small company for price wise, it was a £30 for
two years connection and then another £50 for email for a year. This
was excellent and because I didn't need all the fancy gadgets of
web space and newsgroup access it cut the costs and saved me money.
I received my login/password and a CD to get onto the internet. The
CD cover read, 'Free dot Net, User Software, Windows 95/NT/3.x
Apple Macintosh Systems 7.x' You guessed it no Amiga to be found
anywhere, not even in small print!!!. This problem is found all
to often and a common occurance through most ISPs. It has got slightly
better these days where more ISPs are actually listening to their
customers and do supply so software, if basic.
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 One of the major advances in the Amiga and Internet companies in the
UK was the launch of Wirenet, the first and probably still the only
Amiga only ISP in the country, if not the world. This provides a
high level of Amiga support as you would expect and also Amiga only
software so you know you are getting the newest software and that
will work with your computer.
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 Sticking with ISPs, a case that is more to the hearts of us who live
in the UK is that of phonecalls and the price of them in this country.
For years our American friends have had free local calls along with
some other countries. Unfortunally our country along with most europian
countries charge high prices for calls which limited how long we
use the internet. Then one day a free internet provider decided to
give its customers an 0800 (free) dialup number for each saturday in
March. This may not seem much, 4 days out of a whole month but not having
to pay anything all day is a god send. I was originally thinking this
was a good idea until I actually came to sign up for the offer. The
catch was you were sent adverts to your computer every so often
while you where online and needed to download the special software so
that you could dialup with the 0800 number and so that the ISP
could send the adverts to your computer. This was the problem, the
software was for the PC only and the chance of finding an Amiga
version or someone having enough time to put together something that
would bypass this so you could use it with the Amiga in one months
time was very slim indeed. The PC users got some free calls even
if they could only most of the time connect for an hour if at all
while us Amiga users got stuck with nothing free.
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 There is a whole other part to the internet that we do not have access
to which is on the web. In most parts of the web we are restricted
because our browsers don't support such and such or because the programs
that you need to access certain things just don't exist on the Amiga
because their developers refuse to port it to the Amiga. We have a long
list of these with just a few being Java, Real Audio, Real Video. We
also are disadvantaged when it comes to things like ICQ. There is no
official program to use ICQ on the Amiga but luckily there are some
unofficial ones that act like the real PC and Mac ICQ program. You see
unless us users code these things ourself to make it seem like they
are the real thing they will never exist on the Amiga that we know
at the moment. When the new Amiga takes off then it will most probably
have all these things which will work better than the PC versions if
the new Amiga is a revolutionary as it is meant to be. Now here in the
real world where all of us live most of the time we have to put up
with parts of the web that we just cannot access and things that we
can't use.
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 The internet is meant to be for everyone and available to everyone, its
freedom of speech and all. You can access nearly everything legal or
illegal and it is open to all people around the world. The vast library
of knowledge. This maybe true to PC users, but the internet to Amiga
users it a complete different place. We have our advantages but we also
have parts of the internet that we only dream about using, I have
countless number of times wished to play clips of songs that record
companies put up on their websites only to find that it requires real
audio or to watch a video clip and find it will require a PIII 400mhz
with real video. In this ever changing world the internet is becoming
more PC only than ever before. To the average user they think that
everyone on the internet is using a PC and you say to your average
PC user that you use your Amiga, just watch as they stand stunded
and argue "can the Amiga use the internet?" You try hour after hour
to explain that it can only to receive "whats different". The problem
is that the world sees the internet as a tool that PC users own and
think that it is something Bill Gates, Intel or some other PC giant
thought up and they are honered to be part of this PC global world. The
many times I have been on IRC and asked for some help on a general
channel only told to get M$ this or M$ that, the times that I have
wanted to play some music or video directly from my web browser and
found it isn't possible. FTP'ed to a site and found it didn't work so
asked the person who owned it only to be told why not try this FTP
program for the PC.
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 It is true that we are heavily disadvantaged but you can always
get round things. As long as you can be bothered to give it ago and
not give up straight away the Amiga and the Internet can work together.
We can only hope and wait for the new Amiga.