These type of reviews are always a (painful/depressing/amusing) insight into just how much of a total lack of clue people who are not familiar with AmigaOS have about it.

All you guys who seriously think OS4 is going to appear in the high street should read through the comments to that article. Nobody says "wow, isn't that feature cool?". It's a ton of "it isn't like Windows does it" comments, with a few obvious Amigans trying to point out that it's deliberate because it isn't windows!

Sadly, the pervasiveness of Windows has forever ruined the computer scene, with 95% of computer users unaware of the distinction between OS and hardware, considering "Windows" to be a synonym for "computer".

Do you mean this part of the review?

"I have played with AmigaOS 3.x using Amiga Forever for a few weeks now, and I must say, the lack of protected memory really shows. Without any clear reasons, out of the blue, the OS breaks, and a reboot is required ('press left mouse button to continue'). This is a major problem, and extremely annoying. (...) The frequent crashes I experienced are due to the technical limitations of AmigaOS, and have nothing to do with the actual Amiga Forever package."

@Laser

Yea.. Regular mud slinging match going on in the comments section now.
Most "new" computer users only know ms windows way.
The old exciting days of many types of computers with different OS's will never be known to them.

Cheers,
Tim

@Laser

Sometimes the ignorance can bea source of amusement. I think it may have been from an item about OS4 on osnews. One of the comments from a Linux user read something like "so they've ported KDE to Amiga".

To be honest, I'd hardly call the review detailed.

It was a rather sparse, basic look at the package.

Blamming the crashes on the AmigaOS instead of the emu was just plain wrong, as even the current uae will just bomb back to desktop for no apparant reason without touching the thing occassionaly. AmigaOS was never bulletproof, but it never just died unless some nasty patch was being run.

Having said that the AmigaForever screens that were shown seem to indicate that the emu is showing more of what aos was like 10 years ago instead of what a current amiga setup would be/is like. No wonder it wasnt looked up on too favurably.

Not much of a review, and he was bias on his thoughts.

someone should show him OS4

_________________
Dark Lord Design Wicked Solutions For Damned Problems

I agree...it is a very basic review...how can you judge an OS in hardly two pages?

Where is the reference to the Ram Disk, this guy should really know better.

I wouldn't take him too seriously as he clearly hasn't done his job properly but has done a bit more damage to the Amiga (as if we needed it) by putting a poor review on a site that lots of people visit.

So unprofessional...even if we complain they will always find an excuse like "we only have time and space for a couple of pages).

If there is something that does my head in is unprofessionalism

Last edited by TheDaddy on 13-Dec-2005 at 09:36 AM.

_________________
www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

If the whole world worked the "Amiga" way (or Linux or Mac...) and somebody plonked an "average Joe" in front of Windows XP, just how long would it take for him to get used to it? How many times would we hear "waaa, it isn't what I'm used to..."

Windows is many things, but I'd not consider it intuitive at all.

@hatschi

Quote:

Do you mean this part

I wasn't picking up on that specifically, although the memory protection thing is overstated by people trying to sound technical.

It's an important aspect of an OS that needs to keep running with mutiple users and/or multiple programs when something goes wrong. What people consistently fail to understand is that it doesn't prevent the faulty program going wrong in the first place.

With AmigaOS (<4.x ) a dodgy program does whatever dodgyness it feels it needs to and you may never know about it. You might get away with it. It's that "might" that upsets people. You don't actually know.

With Windows, you get a "An application has made an illegal operation" box. Under NT-based systems you can be fairly sure the rest of it is OK.

Notice, though, that the program still bombs out. The fault has still occurred. It doesn't happen often with decent software. Trying to make out it happens more on the Amiga because of no protection is just plain wrong. If our Amigas crashed every ten minutes we wouldn't be here singing its praises.

As a developer I often run MuGuardianAngel and MuForce. These tools offer a pretty good idea of how much stuff makes "illegal accesses", at the price of a slower machine. And sure enough, every so often there'll be a report of a "naughty" program. 90% of the time they're "safe", meaning it hasn't damaged anything and has got what it wanted. It's still a buggy program, but it isn't going to ruin your day.

When it reports a program regularly doing damaging operations, I remove the program from my harddisk and use something else. It's not ideal, but it isn't a catastophic disaster that renders every other aspect of the OS useless by association either.

* glares at Lazer for his superior sentence structure *

@Foody

Wha..?!

Including the spelling mistakes and poor grammar?

Wow, someone from Norwich! ;)

Say hello to my family for me, please! Hey, have they finished that new shopping mall along St. Stevens yet? ;)

Cheers,
James (born and bred along Trafford Road, Narridge)

IMO the review albeit a bit short and lacking in areas was rather positive coming from someone completely new to the platform. To understand how to get the most out of the emulator and emulated platform takes time and effort.

I hope to finish my review within the coming weeks, provided having enough spare time.

@MikeB

Will look forward to reading that in comparison to this one.

_________________
Dark Lord Design Wicked Solutions For Damned Problems

Quote:

have they finished that new shopping mall

Yeah. Full of clothes shops and expensive coffee places.

>I agree...it is a very basic review...how can you judge an OS in hardly two pages?

Because the main reason for the article was to review the emulator, not the OS.

>If there is something that does my head in is unprofessionalism

When you don't get paid for the job, you try to do a better job reviewing SyllableOS too.

>Grammar mistakes

Thom is from TheNetherlands, I am Greek. The US and UK editors on osnews are very much less involved than we are.

>Because the main reason for the article was to review the emulator, not the OS.

No. The OS is also mentioned.

>When you don't get paid for the job, you try to do a better job reviewing SyllableOS too.

Hey what is that got to do with anything? So you don't get paid and you have the excuse to do a crap job? This is complete nonsense!

So all together now.....we don't get paid so we write a mediocre review...world has gone mad!

I would never write a review of something without going into detail and knowing more about it and yes even if I don't get paid for that review

_________________
www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Hi, I'm Thom Holwerda, the reviewer in question and managing editor of OSNews.com.

There seems to be a big misconception here. I'm was NOT reviewing AmigaOS 1.x-3.x; I was reviewing Amiga Forever. I thought this was quite clear from the start, as the title of my review wasn't "Review: AmigaOS", but "Review: Amiga Forever".

If I were to review AmigaOS itself, I would have bought a classic Amiga and do it that way. I have written a million articles and reviews, and I will only review software/OSs when I can run them in their natural habitat (=native).

Thanks for the feedback though, and I hope I made myself a bit clearer :).

@Thom_Holwerda

Thanks for taking the time out to comment on this. As for the review I thought it was fine, a touch short, and didnt cover some aspects of the package, but no big deal. As for people criticizing the critique of the OS it was a review of the contents of AF, ergo the OS setups will get (and deserve) some flack.... the 3.x setup is freakin' awful, and in my op. can only discourage people from looking at it further.