I've a Compag Armada E500, and it runs Windows 98 fairly swiftly with its PIII processor and 256MB RAM. I've also a 2009 MacBook and it runs Snow Leopard like a dream, yet with "only" 2GB of RAM. And either of these machines could do nearly anything I ask of a PC today - programming, web browsing, comms, gfx edits, even some gaming, while feeling snapper, with less shite flying in my eyes ("notifications" and their wretched noises) as I work.

Someone will explain to me the business and economic reasons, but that just flies over my caveman brain that asks "why does bashing rock feel slower?"

Things are slow, aren't they? I feel there was a lot of less lag in old operating systems and software.

I use two editors now. VS Code as full IDE when I want to code heavily. And a homemade FLTK based editor with just basic syntax coloring for writing notes and doing quick things.

I use a 27 year old Pentium 2 laptop with Windows 98 for a hobby project. And I keep asking myself: why does this thing feel so fast? And it could be even faster if I replaced the HDD with a CF card.

I’m sure my privacy conscious setup would STILL on average transmit > 56kbps of telemetry, despite my best efforts