My 2 cents are that Pack Chrysalis is really good for people who have returned to the Amiga after a long time absence. There are a whole lot of useful things there that you don't know that you want. And HDD space certainly isn't a problem. What I always do after a clean install is to install this pack and remove the stuff I don't want. Since I want most of the things anyway it saves time doing it this end (uninstalling rather than installing from scratch).

Grunch is a given must as well.

I have a G5 2,7 GHz (liquid cooled) and though it got it's bugs and the cooling system tend to leak I am very very satisfied with this system. It's the one I use everyday.

A Mac Mini is the perfect beginners system since you don't have to buy anything else and you don't have to check for compatibility (or hardware) issues. With MOS it simply works. But if you want some more power and got a little deeper pockets I think a G5 Powermac (with at least a Raceon 9600 128 meg) is a more justified system (Unless physical space is a problem of course. My G5 is huge and weighs 20 kilos). I bought a Mac Mini 1,25 GHz first, and though it was a nice first use I never turn it on any more. Though I should have waited for a 1,5 GHz with 64 meg VRAM like everyone already mentioned.

Quote:
I would stay away from Chrysalis Pack. It installs tons of software of varying quality in arbitrary locations and changes some system settings. In my opinion starting with clean system and installing software by hand or with Grunch is much better and easier to grasp.

Quote:

I'd say Chrysalis Pack is good if you need a quick setup for demoing or something like that. Or if you want to be inspired what can be configured or installed... new users might take a look to it, but then it's better to start from clean installation and configure the system like you want. Or have one partition with Chrysalis and another with your own setup. But of course if you're extremely lazy and you'd use the system only occasionally, then Chrysalis might be a good solution for you, but be prepared that there might be some problems for example after official OS updates that way.

I will be the descending voice here and still claim that Pack C is a good way of getting what you want fast. I am lazy myself, but I use my MOS system everyday now (before I used my PC for everything, nowadays I only use it once every 3 days) and most of the preinstalled programs are still there since they are useful.

If you are the kind of person who wants to fix everything yourself you don't need it. But if you just want everything you might need anyway Pack C will save you a lot of time and headache. And from my experience, there has been no problems yet with OS updates (3.0 to 3.1).