It wasn't bad when you had hardware which had drivers made for ME, or the hardware was supported sufficiently by ME itself. And only used software which didn't

It wasn't bad when you had hardware which had drivers made for ME, or the hardware was supported sufficiently by ME itself. And only used software which didn't rely on kludges which didn't work under ME(anymore). Which wasn't the reality for most users of the patchworked systems common and available at the time.