I loved my Amiga 500 and, in many ways, it's still my favourite computer of all those I've owned, but I can't help feeling rather sad and wistful every time I read recent Amiga announcements and articles. There's always this sense of them trampling over my rose-tinted recollections of adolescence.

I mean, is the X5000 really an Amiga? The thing with the Amiga was that in the 1980s it was streets ahead of pretty much anything else that was available at the time, albeit only for a relatively short period. It had all this super cool custom hardware and a great OS. Whereas the X5000 is a kind of mid-tier desktop computer with somewhat interesting hardware (a point in its favour Amiga-wise, especially that loopy custom chip, granted) and a whopper of a price tag.

I like the idea of a widely available computer with a different hardware architecture and operating system than the currently available choices (which basically boils down to PCs... and expensive PCs that run OSX) but, as the X5000 stands, what would I do with it? Where is the software? How could I do my job with it? Where are the games (a big draw on the original Amiga)?

I hate to be a downer because I really loved the Amiga but, guys, it's over. It just is. It's been over for decades. And it makes me sad but it's not going to change without, for one thing, a much better capitalised company behind it, as well as an end to all the trademark nonsense.