Amiga

When I was first looking to buy my first computer, one of the models that I looked at was the Amiga 500. Yes, Singapore was slightly behind times then, so this model only became affordable (relatively) when I was ready to get my first PC.

The Amiga series of computers were way ahead of its time. At a time when the IBM PCs were still struggling with DOS, and still using 16-colour or even 4-colour displays, the Amiga had 4096 colours, and a built in sound system that put the PC speaker to shame. It was a gaming PC, you can say, for its time. And it had a graphic user interface (GUI) that started to appear in IBM PCs only when Microsoft came up with the Windows series of operating systems (OS). And Windows was not standard packaging then, unlike now. No, you had to separately install Windows 3.0, which ran on top of DOS.

So why didn't I get an Amiga? Because the mainstream in Singapore back then was already the IBM PCs, and most software was for IBM PCs, rather than Amiga. So in the end, we decided on getting an IBM PC, instead of the gaming PC that would have mesmerised me with its superior graphics and sound.