I don't think it can all be attributed to nostalgia. I have read papers on HCI that show this effect exactly, too much ornamentation to to little. The big thing

I don't think it can all be attributed to nostalgia. I have read papers on HCI that show this effect exactly, too much ornamentation to to little. The big thing is consistency though. You can adapt to pretty much anything apparently if it the same everywhere, tougher to do if it is only "similar" everywhere. Or worse, the same but different. I've got an old Celeron system I was going to throw away but because of this I just installed the 32bit version of Haiku on it and have been enjoying its simple style.