[Markstar]

Yep, those were the days. I still have the Thunderbird CPU that I overclocked using the pencil method sitting on my desk because it was such an awesome CPU.

Tangible progress every year that made it worth upgrading your parts and tech news were actually exciting back then (I still remember upgrading from my 386 with 33MHz to a 486 DX4 with 100MHz). Now the tech media is making a big deal about 10% improvements. :/

[dehrmann]

I almost want to blame it on how old I was in 2000, but it really was an exciting time for computing. A lot of things that weren't quite ready for prime time were finally ready. 3D games became playable, Windows graduated to a "real" OS when XP put NT in the home, chips were still getting faster...

The internet was still being figured out and wouldn't really be ready until ~2005 with widespread broadband adoption.

The other big thing that didn't happen until later was SSDs.

[int_19h]

"Real" 3D games happened a little bit before then, though. Descent, Quake, Unreal...

This was top of the line 3D gaming as of 1998: https://retronn.de/ftp/videos/unreal_intro_voodoo2_sli.mp4

[lomase]

And that small 10% improvement most likely gives you the processing power of hundreds of 486DX