Sometime in the late 1990s, I had a friend who was an Amiga fanatic and would spend hours telling us how they were the most powerful, versatile, flawless machines ever conceived by man.

I went with him when he bought his new A-4000 and some 3D modelling software. He told us how it will render true 3D in almost real time. I shrugged, watched him set the thing up, and load the software. He fed the thing a wireframe and gave it some textures and background elements. Six days later, the computer finished rendering the first frame.

He explained later that he discovered he only had 2 megs of RAM and had ordered 4. “Isn’t that still kind of pathetic?” I asked. “My girlfriend’s HP has 16.”

He said, “Well, Amigas use everything so much more efficiently, so it compares to a PC with gigabytes of RAM. It’s enough to hack your IBM through the power outlet.”

I gave up all sense of restraint and must have laughed for 20 minutes.