CompuServe Messages

QuickTime beats the Amiga if you're not intending on doing anything more than looking at little tiny/grainy movies in a window on your desktop. QuickTime is not a viable format for use in broadcast TV (at this point). As a Toaster owner, I cannot see any reason to buy the A4000, as the Toaster will be a kludge if it works at all on that system. You would be better off buying an A2000 and throwing in a 3rd paty 040 board. Your Toaster (if you get one) would be MUCH happier in there (trust me, I have a Toaster in the 3000, and had to hack the case to get it to fit). I just had to send in my board to NewTek because my A3000/040 accelerator cooked the board. They fixed it in 2 days at no charge and were very helpful. I personally, have never had any problems with them, but others seem to be having worse luck. LightWave is the best package I have used on the Amiga, tho' other packages have different strengths not shared by LightWave. 3-D packages on the Mac may have nicer interfaces, but I think LW still beats them all for pure rendering speed. The biggest question is: What platform are you using now? If you have a Mac already, you'll be able to get started cheaper by buying some Mac software. Though ALL hardware/software for the Mac will cost you more than similar software on the Amiga. If you don't own a system already, you could get setup for less money on the Amiga, but you'll have to get used to the many inconsistencies between different applications on the Amiga. Aimga developer's will rarely follow any standard conventions of Graphical User Interface design, and this can be really frustrating to the uninitiated. As for the Music side of the equation, the Mac is still probably the leader, but others here may have a different opinion. (I do 3-D, not music.) Anyway, hope this gets you started. Merry Christmas! ,<|:^) Erik Flom