As someone who was hardcore into Windows around that time, all my memory has is waiting desperately for windows to open & apps to load. I remember watching the

As someone who was hardcore into Windows around that time, all my memory has is waiting desperately for windows to open & apps to load. I remember watching the left-side of explorer paint before the icons came in, and how the icons would paint in order; some days you’d see black squares paint, then the icon. This was running on some dual-socket, 192mb, 7200rpm spinning disk - it wasn’t a slouch. I also struggle with the comparison between high-end hardware of yesteryear, and low end hardware of today and comparing. Try running win2k in 16mb, 300mhz P2, and a 4800rpm drive. The only times I remember experiencing things this fast in my computing career were (a) with a fair wind, and a fully warmed cache that didn’t hit the disk & was a trivial app (b) the first time I used my Apple M1 Max MBP.