[smoldesu]

Today's laptops and the majority of desktops boot more than 10x faster than they did a decade ago, so for all but the youngest users I feel like this point is moot. There was an age where you had to go get a coffee while your hard drive started spinning up, I remember kids starting their Macbooks before they got in the car for school so they'd be booted by the time they were in class...

[bitwize]

When I was a kid, kids weren't issued MacBooks for class. There was a single, lone Apple II in the back we played Oregon Trail on -- and it took a fair few minutes to load from floppy.

[nl]

A floppy drive? Get off my lawn

On my C64 I'd start loading a game from cassette tape before dinner so I could play it afterwards.

[jamiek88]

Cassette? Pah!

I had to type the games source code in from a magazine for my acorn electron.

[noizejoy]

Cassette tape?

Punched tape[0]: Hold my beer

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape

[nl]

I don't think punched tape or punched card was ever used for a personal computer though.

The Altair launched with a cassette tape interface anyway.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

[noizejoy]

Fair enough, but would it be fair to argue that personal computer is a pricing distinction, rather than a technology distinction?

In my mental model, the technology distinction is more between single user and multi-user systems. And arguably that is more a a software differentiator than a hardware difference.

[gzer0]

Floppy drive?

On my 9 track tape I would be lucky if the thing loaded and was ready to use 72 hours later [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape