I think the Sun and SGI would still be viable as a daily driver. Or a PC but it depends how old. I understand what you mean regarding the emulators not being s

I think the Sun and SGI would still be viable as a daily driver. Or a PC but it depends how old. I understand what you mean regarding the emulators not being so impressive. However don't forget that an emulator isn't the real thing. If I fire up my Atari 800XL it feels very different than an emulator. Actually loading something I wrote from tape feels different too. Only the display is hard to emulate: I no longer own CRT TVs. I had an Amiga 500 afterwards and I can imagine what you mean about the biggest jump. The Amiga had pre-emptive multitasking in the time of Windows 3. The games and graphics were amazing. But for me the biggest jump was to the HP-UX boxes at college. They really felt like 'big' computers. I still own one also for old time's sake. But when I think of this 'wow this is a real computer' feeling, that's what I'm thinking of. Working with a room full of X terminals on one single server, all that stuff. But I don't really use anything retro in daily life. I do have a VT520 terminal (a real CRT one) and I use it sometimes. I love the soft orange glow and the fact I can make it so dim that it's not eyeblinding in a completely dark room at night. LCDs absolutely cannot do that anymore. They're tuned for max brightness, not minimum. I use it sometimes when I really need to focus on something to write. But the number of console apps that still actually obey termcap or terminfo (the database of terminal commands for each different terminal type) is ridiculously low now. Most of them just blast out xterm without checking the terminal type. Which makes for really poor terminal UI as some xterm is VT220 compatible but an awful lot is not, which end up being crypting escape sequences on screen. Also, 80x25 is not ideal in this day and age, and while the VT520 can do 132x50, it is not very well defined. There's a reason nobody really used it back then. But if I really had to pick one it'd be the HP-UX box :) I loved VUE's little "computer" at the bottom. Though it really missed a taskbar (it used icons on the desktop for open programs which is really not handy as they don't stay on top). But I could work with it and it's a capable linux system. Around 2000 I had a whole gnu userspace on it but these days it's too hard to compile modern stuff. PS: I always wanted an ST and my dad could get one from work, but he picked the PC instead. In the end it was the wise choice, no doubt. I upgraded the thing from 8088 to well into the 486 age until I had to get a new case to fit ATX motherboards. But I still regret it a bit.