Comment by lnrd
3 years ago
25 years ago we were in Windows 98 times.
UX and general day to day quality of life has been improved dramatically in the last 25 years for 'regular' consumer things. I would take everyday a 'shitty bloaty' modern operating system if the alternative is to run something from that era. Especially for mundane things like the ones you mentioned. I can open a spreadsheet on my computer and instantly have it in all my devices or shared with anyone in the world. I can have 4k video and max res pictures backed up everywhere. Maybe you don't remember how clunky were computers 25 years ago and how low resolution everything was.
For 'professional' things (Coding, Game Development, Video Editing, Design, Photoediting, Architectural work) today technology simply allow things that were not possible even 5 years ago, 25 years ago are ancient times. I don't know what you do with computers, but there are plenty of things that you couldn't do just a short time ago.
I have a several copies of Windows 98 running on emulators.
The quality of life is not that different from a modern OS. I wouldn’t call it dramatically improved. The paradigms have just changed, and not even that drastically. Business tasks are particularly similar. Certain tasks are actually easier on something like Excel 97 than they are on Excel 2021. Applications actually adhered to human interface guidelines.