Here`s a brief history, which will hopefully educate, and dispel some misconceptions.

1982: Jay Miner (an Atari engineer), Dave Morse, and RJ Mical got together to design a games computer, using custom chips instead of the other chips everyone else was using. This "games" computer ended up being something much more powerful & useful. Funding was drying up, and the company was put up for sale. Atari farted around trying to squeeze a tight-arsed deal, when Commodore stepped in at the last moment to snap up the team & the technology.

Over the years, Commodore released the Amiga 1000; 500; 2000; 2500; 3000; 4000; 1200. They also brought out (some would say threw up) the CDtv & CD32, which were great ideas but just not fully exploited. If you want technical details then check out http://www.nationalamiga.com/Technical.html.

Due to the alleged mega-lo-mania/stupidity/arrogance of Mehdi Ali, his henchmen, and Commodore`s consistent stupidity in marketing, and their money-burning venture into the pc market, they went bust. The Amiga wasn`t a failure, Commodore's strategy and management was (In America, at least).

Commodore was bought by Escom, the pc dealers. Escom expanded with alot of new stores, and due to this they had cash problems. They therefore decided to discourage people from buying Amiga`s, in favour of their pc`s. The pc`s gave them a higher profit margin than Amiga`s, you see. Escom did alot of damage to the Amiga`s reputation. Thankfully, Escom went bust anyway.

1997: After much speculation and legal wrangles, The new (and current) Amiga owner is Gateway 2000 (although they want to be known as Gateway from now on). If the truth be known GW only bought Commodore for it's patents, "much like buying a box of things marked "stuff", and didn't know what use it would be at first, although some suspect that the operating system was planned to be examined and tailored for their pc's. GW were very surprised (and pleased) to find huge amounts of e-mails/letters/comments from amigans across the globe. They didn't know that such a large user-base still existed, and that they were so passionate about the amiga.

GW set up Amiga International as it`s subsidiary to handle the Amiga development. The major development so far was the decision and implementation to go PPC, coupled with the 68k series chip, developed by Phase 5. This took a knock recently as the "Mitchie" was announced, which seemed to leave ppc in the cold, but recently Phase 5 & Haage & Partner kissed & made up, and both are talking with A-Inc as to incorporate ppc compatibility in the new Mitchie Amiga.

See News for more info. on Mitchie. Suffice to say that the Amiga will once again be at the forefront of modern computing. Leading the way with a powerful friendly system that you can personalise to your hearts content.