I found this video about 2 months ago and posted it to my blog. The embedding seems not to work properly for a lot of people so I'll just give you a link to it here and repeat what I said to introduce it:

The 'New' Amiga (1988)

Originally broadcast in 1988, this 28 minute Computer Chronicles video takes a look at what was then, the brand new Amiga, and the amazing things it could do.

Considering one could own one of these for less than $1000, it made affordable to small businesses and home users, the kinds of things that once were only available to large businesses with tons of cash.

Compared to the capabilities and cost of a PC with MS-DOS 4 or Windows 386/2.1 ($5,000) or a Mac with OS2 ($4,869), buying an Amiga made a lot of sense.

This time warp brought to you by archive.org. High resolution copies of this Creative Commons licensed video are available for download.

I wasn't into computers when the Amiga was at its height, unfortunately. I wish I could have had a chance to have used one of these. I feel a bit deprived.

I kind of look at all Amigas, including the newer µ-A1, sort of like how a city child looks at a pony, wishing they could have one as a pet, running loose in their house. 

I think part of my fondness for them is based on thoughts of what could have been and what computing life would be like now, if they had become the top dog instead of Microsoft. Just imagine how Win95 could have been if Amiga had created & released it. It probably would only have needed 2MB of RAM. 

For all its flaws, AmigaDOS was *amazing*.  Quite literally 10 years ahead of its time, and even the first-gen version that shipped with the original machine was stable and quick.  Since service packs were shipped on floppy disks in the mail, I don't think we even applied any for the first year or so it was out.

It had everything we take for granted in modern operating systems: pre-emptive multitasking, integrated memory management, windowed GUI, command-line, long file names, daemons,  hardware graphics support, and more.  Yet it was developed on a shoestring and under intense deadline pressure and shipped with only a few minor defects. 

It's the equivalent of building a jet aircraft in 1935 and having it fly & land perfectly the first time.  THEN building a million of them and handing them over to novice pilots and none of them crashing.  Simply amazing.

Thanks for the link and video, app, and how'd you get that error message copied, cranio?! Got to love the sense of humor.

@Ralf, it was called the 'IBM Sidecar', and worked fine on the A500 pointing the wrong way

Yes, I admit it.....I'm an old Amiga user, (or should that be 'a user of old Amigas'?).  I've bought every version of Cloanto's 'Amiga Forever' and Amithlon, (very, VERY quick), when it was available.

I've had an A500, A600, A500+ and numerous attachments - SupraTurbo28 anyone?  All sold off when I migrated to my ultimate - the A3000.  (AGA sucks, ECS RULEZ!!!!

My poor 'old' 1990 A3000 with CyberStormPPC 180, PicassoIV (including Paloma and Pablo II), 132MB, A2065, HDs, 1.76MB floppy(!) and Wizard mouse now lies lonely and semi-forgotten in the wardrobe.  I've often thought about selling it off but just can't bring myself to do it

And yes, every damn day on the PC I really, REALLY miss ARexx - VBScript is a complete dog's breakfast by comparison, and all these bl**dy uncommunicative programs........AAAARRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

60 programs to do what you could do with 10 really good ones plus ARexx.  Bill Hawes was my hero, WShell still can't be beat IMHO.

For those that are interested still, my sites: http://4x4.hopto.org and http://4wd.hopto.org

A new emulator that has appeared, (well not really new, more 'tuned'): http://xamiga.net/index.html

....Jeeezz....I'm feeling inclined to get the A3000 out and fire it up again......

EDIT: One of my favourite games that I always returned to on the Amiga, (after killing things in whatever the latest fps was), was Larn - and now I play it on the PC in the guise of ULarn, 2.91MB   When a Level III Demon Lord belts you one from nowhere......the suspense 

*sob* King tut!  My old friend.

And here's another...



Your own Windows version of Boing! can be had here.

  I still have a highly customized Amiga 500 and a ton of software in a closet (over 500 games).  It hasn't been fired up in years.  Heck, I even have a digidroid and a digitizing platform for it, external hard drive/4mb ram, fat agnes, doubled speed, dual boot switch (1.3 or 2.1), and a bunch of other stuff that I can't even remember now.  I even have Cloanto Amiga Forever, the software (CD) that runs AmigaDOS on a PC.  It comes with AmigaROM's from 2.1 all the way down to 1.0.   
  I do miss the old AmigaDOS, it was a fine operating system for the times.  Hard to believe MicroSoft wrote it.  Really hard to believe that they sold the rights to it.  No telling what it could have been if a certain president of C= hadn't of sabotaged the company for $$$.  Ever wonder what Congress came up with on the investigation of Commodore's bankruptcy?

  I have seen ads for the New Amiga's, basically a PC with some kind of Amiga board in a PCI slot, or something like that.

  I was also the co-sysop of the 2nd largest Amiga BBS system in the U.S. way back when.  Ah, the memories.......

I still have an Amiga 3,000 with the Invision "LIVE!" board
Because the LIVE! board has never been adapted by PC, or MAC (as far as we know) my partner still occasionally uses it for live music performances.
If anyone know show to adapt the board to a PC, I'd love to hear about it.

My Amiga 500 is still in front on me, while I use my PC. I hardly will put it away.
What about the way the creators named the main chips inside? Weren't they among the most creative tech minds in the world at that time? :)
I remember there was a legend about a "hello mom" message by one of the engeeners in some unused blocks of the ROM, do you know if it was true and details?

The only bad thing in Amiga imho was the fact that a lot of time was needed to retrieve the disk directory when it was full of little files.
Every other memory about that little cheap computer is something like... "SO GOOD!"
Besides, when I bought it all my nice C64 joysticks where compatible, nice save...
And, that was my first approach with that useful thing called mouse bundled in the box, and with an OS that had a built in voice synthesis software, and a very well written and fun cmyk user manual, and... ok ok, back to work, sigh.

You guys make me feel like I really missed out. I have always felt the same about NextStep computers. I actually had a chance to play with one while I was doing my masters degree - my supervisor actually built his own NextStep machine to replace his original one. I used to sit and drool over the things he could do with it... Then I'd wander back to my notebook running Windows for Workgroups 3.11...

Anyway, I understand what App was talking about earlier - I regret not having used one "in the day". I don't really recall Amiga being a "player" after about 1991/2 - certainly, I don't recall ever having seen one for sale in a shop anywhere in the sleepy little hamlet that I lived in (and still live in!).

The silver lining is that I never had to go through "falling in love" with the system and watching it effectively disappear.

Not really

Also, it seems they used female names for familiarity and to avoid industrial espionage (Atari ST?)

Tinman, please don't make things up. Read something like:

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/lorraine.html

The "Agnus" chip is named for agnus dei ('lamb of God') by Jay Miner (who designed most of the system himself). Similarly, "Paula" was itself named between "Portia" and Paula, and the Lorraine Project was the name for this variant system which Miner had been working on for some time before Commodore came along.

I got it down from the loft last year, and it still managed to get from being switched on to Workbench fully loaded and ready to go in ~10 seconds. How long do our PCs take to boot these days?

I remember a very nice demo (State of the Art by Spaceballs) which loaded and run from a floppy disk in the very same moment it was inserted into the drive. I mean, you turned the Amiga on, inserted the disk in drive, and after some milliseconds you were staring at a ultrasmooth vector gfx & sound animations dancing on the monitor while still loading stuff... (with Flash you can do something similar now, but still not as smooth, and not without plenty of MHz, RAM, and a full OS loaded!!!)
Which consumer non-Amiga machines allow to do that today, if I want this kind of feature and I have whatever budget? (I'm serious, let me know :)
Turn on -> (no wait) -> custom software running

Re-read it. Still wrong.