I did love that era, in terms of it providing a young frugal person with the opportunity to buy upgrades piecemeal. It felt like there was more generational ove

I did love that era, in terms of it providing a young frugal person with the opportunity to buy upgrades piecemeal. It felt like there was more generational overlap, as you describe, so it was possible to just go out and buy a new CPU, or a new graphics card, for a few hundred carefully saved dollars of birthday and christmas money, and get a sizeable upgrade in performance. That era is over, especially with the current pricing crunch. What I am hoping for is that this leads to a resurgence for all those used computers out there... plenty of great machines from the last decade that should have no problem being competent workstations for 90% of people's needs for the next decade onward if treated well. This is where open standards and open source truly shine.