In the last month, Analytics tells me, we’ve had one user accessing our site from Windows CE. Brilliant.

I set up my Amiga 1200 on a 2Mb broadband, with a 10Mb network card. A large number of sites didn’t display too well admittedly though, but a surprising number did. Sadly the hard drive has since bit the dust.

Alas it is not I. My humble A500 is stowed away, has no modem (and the memory expansion self destructed). I do remember someone in the forums mentioning they still used an Amiga though.
It is also possible some of those stats are faked since it is possible to spoof the headers. Some of them may even be bots or website strippers masking their fingerprint.

The Amiga visitors are probably not using old Commodore Amigas, but the more modern PowerPC-based AmigaOne or Sam440 systems. These have processors running in the 500MHz-1.2GHz range and run AmigaOS 4.0, which is massively updated over the 3.x version that Commodore’s Amigas used.

I used to own an an AmigaOne with OS 4.0. The OS is wonderful: elegant, fast, lightweight and polished – in many ways better than Windows or OS X. But the AmigaOne hardware was buggy, unreliable and generally terrible.

What’s odd is that when i go to the browserspy site, it says i am running XP when i am running Windows 7 Browser IE7/8. But when i use another browser it says the MS Windows NT framework 6.1. Why is that?

@ Henry – windows 6.1 is the release of windows NT that windows 7 actually is. Confusing eh! Different browsers will take the OS string from different registry keys, hence the difference.

As for how, there are a couple of possibilities. Could be people running on new hardware, or people using an emulator.

As for motive… It could be the challenge. It could be simply because they can. There are people putting C-64s online for the same reasons, and an Amiga makes for a more viable online experience than a C-64 does.

I was once a huge Amiga fan myself. The machine was a good decade ahead of its time, providing good multimedia capabilities, fully pre-emptive multitasking, and plug-and-play that really worked way back in 1985. Every time I think about it, I think about what might have been.

You found one user using Amiga OS on a virtual machine, maybe I am the other one of the two? I have an Amiga image setup on AmigaUE.

Thanks for all the comments.

We’ll certainly dig deeper to find out why there’s such a high proportion of “Windows 95″ machines. It could be spoofing, although I can think of no obvious reason to spoof as Windows 95.

It might be that visitors from developing nations, with older, recycled computers are running Windows 95, although I have no evidence to back that up and the analytics software can’t break OS down by country, sadly.

Barry Collins
Online Editor

i think its important to know that this is a world wide accessed web site. it would be interesting to tie these numbers to geographical data to see where these people are coming from.

finally can you imagine reading about the latest greatest PC’s etc while surfing on windows 3.11!?!

Im suprised the site even displays.

Why use an Amiga? Because a decently specced Amiga is a joy to use, still. A B2000 with a 68030 card, or an A4000 with an 040, and 2-4MB RAM is superb to work on. Add a 24bit card, or a flicker fixer, and what else do you need? This is a 25yr old architecture, with an OS arguably as old, doing smooth pre-emptive multi-tasking, with more concurrently open and *running* apps than most PCs can still manage. Ok, the downside is “collaboration” with the outside world is nigh-on impossible, but for many tasks, it is still not just suitable, but in many ways superior. Create content in ProWrite, import into Pagestream and create newsletters and other DTP work, faster and easier then on a PC, for example. Copy a file to/from floppy and not see an hourglass… (I know PCs dont use them often, on an Ami one does so it is pertinent). Menu selection is so much easier, epsecially multiple item selection.

Sure, when I want to watch x264 or listen to MP3, or email or create work documents, I use a PC. But the Amiga OS is just sooo much nicer.

There again, my bet is now 10years old, with no takers. My machine against yours, to create and print a letter (address blocks, salutation, one line such as hello world, close) from power on to print finish; my machine is quicker and will finish first.

AmigaOne user here, 1GHz G4 with latest AmigaOS 4.1. I use it because I like it! It’s fast and responsive, no DLL hell, simple system mainteinance, no fear of viruses and trojans, an interpreted language which is used by most programs (commercial and freeware) to control them programmatically, all temp files stored in a dynamic RAM disk. Plus I have always liked proprietary HW + SW platforms. I use it to browse Internet (I use OWB, which has more features than IBrowse), write emails, chat on IRC, MSN and (via web) Skype, port Linux software, listen to streaming radios, watch Divx anime, manage and store my photos.

@DrRamtop
I’m sorry to hear that you had problems with you A1. I can say that mine is stable and troubleless, at least so far.

With the court battle between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion now concluded, I’m one PCPro subscriber who would just love to see an article in PCPro about the Amiga as it is now. For those of you who have lost track of the Amiga, take a look at this review of OS4 on the much respected Ars Technica site, you may be suprised.

Here’s something to really blow your mind! The Amiga Community even has a podcast! I know. Sexy huh? All that AND indoor plumbing!

Some of the unidentified entries might be from a C64, which also has a Browser and a network interface available, the RRNet with Contiki…see http://www.jschoenfeld.com/news/news88_e.htm

I’ve just up’d the Win95 stats by a couple – on a old Win95 Meridian Access Terminal! I was suprised how well IE5.5 rendered and produced the pcpor site (and quickly as well), only thing it couldn’t do was play flash 10 adverts (nevermind Anyway can you not cross reference some stats, i.e. I think the newest version of IE browser on Win95 is IE5.5 – do you get similar stats for access from IE5.5? Also does one visit get logged as one or does it log hits? Thus tens of thousands could be 100 win95 machines?

And your analytics can’t tell you where in the world people are coming from?

As has been mentioned, I doubt you’re getting the full picture, and there are more Amiga users around than you think. Most of the older Amiga browsers allow the user to type in any user agent string they like in the preferences, though with the newer browsers using the WebKit engine this is less of a necessity. I have a “modern” Amica here and use it for handling my music collection and 90% of my internet and communication needs, including web development. For the other 10% and for the odd game, I have the PC. But there’s something about turning on the Amiga and using it for a task that most people wouldn’t believe is possible… I can’t put a finger on it, but it just feels nicer. Turning on the PC is like turning on any PC – it works, it does its job, and that’s it. It’s an appliance, like the fridge or the washing machine. But the Amiga, I turn it on and it’s actually enjoyable to use. You could even go as far as to say it’s fun. And if I can make something more enjoyable, why the hell not?

The best explanation is that some people like to run computers that they like, not what the market corners them into. As for it being a necessity, I can’t vouch for the rest of the world’s hardware availability, but you don’t browse the Internet with an Amiga due to ‘necessity.’ It is distinctly more difficult to get a ‘nettable Amiga than just about anything else out there. So make that a point towards “because you can.”

Why should I buy a 2010 Mustang? Why even a 2008 Honda Civic? Do we need the newest equipment to do our thing? Whatever it might be?

I happen to like the 1956 Thunderbird, guess that makes me an idiot.

Why play that 1898 Stradavarius, when this new violin comes in different colors!

And you’ll find there’s people out there running virtual Win 95 on Mac OSX just so they can load some of those “Internet Explorer only” sites. Or maybe they just like a smaller faster OS than, for instance, Windows Vista’s 15GB bloatware.

My web stats (for a smallish website targetting a fairly elderly non-techy demographic) show almost no use of windows 95 *by humans* but quite a lot of spoofed windows 95 browsing by spam posting/email harvesting bots. I suspect that that accounts for much of PCPro’s stats.

you should see what my c64 can do never mind amiga use for web.

Why use the Amiga .Amiga is the best by far -true 64bit -true 48bit graphics ineach cahnneln of superior rgb and e -that alone is why we use amiga
secondly, your stuff couldnt read our webbrowsers as amigas and calls them 95 or 3.11 half the time anyhow-remeber you ur self had said you ahent seen the 95 machince in years
and yes linux kicks win 7s arse so it will kick win 95 arse

Not all Amigas are from Commodore. I suspect MorphOS and AROS will report as Amigas as well as AmigaOS4.