We're In This Together Now
In the week running up to this article, anyone visiting my house would've had a hard time to persuade me that the Amiga is a 'dead' platform in the face of some hefty evidence to the contrary. Sitting under the desk is a brand new PowerTower A4000 (including a bubble-wrapped Zorro slot extension) that will be receiving the A4000/030 after this article is finished and dispatched to Suite101. It's huge, but very well- built - space for a planned ethernet card, SCSI CD-RW, G4 card... and probably more.
On the shelf next to my boxed copy of Linux Mandrake 6.0, Amiga CD-ROMs and cable gender changers is a shiny new AmigaOS 3.5 box, plus 3.1 ROMs in an antistatic hard case. I haven't installed either yet, but the packaging is a refreshing change in the days when Amiga software is often distributed as CD-Rs, in generic cases, with a flimsy insert and no printed manual. Okay, OS 3.5 isn't fully printed- manual compliant, but just to have a printed installation manual inside a proper graphically-designed box really made my day. But then, I'm easily pleased...
Finally, STFax 4 and Netconnect 3 arrived - shortly followed by two copies of the new Amigactive magazine. STFax has already been installed, and is well worth the money (even if you only ever use the fax software, a small subset of the package) but I can seriously see me putting some of the other telephony services to use at some point - messaging, SMS, MiniBBS. The feature list managed to impress a PC user in the office, which was an unexpected bonus. Netconnect 3 will be installed as soon as the PowerTower conversion is complete. Amigactive is the surprise new entry into the Amiga magazine market, breaking the trend of Amiga magazines closing up at regular intervals. Amigactive takes a more serious approach to Amiga usage, and is well worth a look.
So, for a 'dead' platform the Amiga is in surprisingly good shape. Not exactly vibrant and growing, but not fading and collapsing despite all that has happened. In fact, I think some are actually quite frightened or jealous that the Amiga is still ticking along. Take the disgusting attacks on several prominent Amiga websites, serious concerted cracking attempts putting sites out of action for days at a time - or even permanently. Aminet, Amibench, Amiga.org, the list grows. What possible reason is there for causing such disruption? Fear, is my best guess, though I'm sure it's not alone amongst reasons.
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