That's how I remember the late 90's and early 2000's specifically, which I think was an especially dark age for the speed of the overall software + hardware com

That's how I remember the late 90's and early 2000's specifically, which I think was an especially dark age for the speed of the overall software + hardware combo. but if we go a bit more recent (say 2005 to today) I mostly haven't perceived a gain in speed. That said, I think in the last very few years it's turned around a bit, mainly due to SSDs. In my experience most times that software is painfully slow (in any era) it's because you have too many things open and you're swapping. And SSDs provide acceptable speed even when swapping. In other words, I find modern machines to be roughly as slow as ~2005, but only up to the very recent years when SSDs have become the norm. Now I'm starting to finally feel things being faster overall.