I think its great that we can take the technology for granted. And that its affordable and increasingly powerful. Even better, those who are even mildly adventurous can swap Windows for an alternative OS with as little as a free live-CD. Try DamnSmallLinux or Knoppix or Ubuntu.
I frugal-installed DSL on an old, junk K6-400 machine the other day, and now have a virtually bulletproof and -damn fast-, run from RAM, set-top, web-surfing box running Firefox for my folks, better yet, plug it into the ADSL connection and it "just works".
When you look at the proprietary/closed systems of the 80's and their marketing/manufacturing objectives, its hard to argue that computer technology would be as advanced as it is today, were those companies still big players.
C= (et al) were busy re-serving the same 8bit technology for 10 years in as many different flavours, before they bought the Amiga, then they dropped 8bit like it was hot and let the Amiga stagnate for another 5+ years before releasing an incremental update.
Yeah, they were fun, but computer tech' has moved on a lot since then. Its a case of moving along with it.
