I think that all peaked in the mid-to-late 90's when software and hardware was progressing so fast you had to eek as much as possible out of your older hardware

I think that all peaked in the mid-to-late 90's when software and hardware was progressing so fast you had to eek as much as possible out of your older hardware. My girlfriend will say she got comfortable with computer hardware when she spilled soda on her's in college and could only afford to replace it with an older model. She opened it up to upgrade the RAM because it was so terrible. This led her to build her next few computers. Prior to ubiquitous tablets and smartphones I had heard similar things you mention except the classifier was, "always spending time on Facebook." As an interesting aside, I've heard people assert the computer industry is male-dominated because radio shack and others marketed computers as toys for males back in the 80's-90's. This carried over to first year comp sci where males had a leg-up and discouraged otherwise just as qualified females. They had a few anecdotes where young girls were more interested in the home computer than their brothers, but the computer was kept in their brother's room because of this stigma.