286 vs. 386SX
The 1990 through 2000 stand out to me as the biggest period of innovation and technical acceleration where it comes to PC. While the 80&#x27;s certainly witnessed the birth and growth of the &quot;personal computer&quot;, most of the computers in that decade were still 8086- and 8088-class machines, along with the barely-more-capable 80286 that didn&#x27;t get popular until the late 80&#x27;s.<p>But in the 90&#x27;s we went from 286 and 386 class machines to the scorching-fast 750MHz AMD Athlon. It was very depressing to sink a few thousand dollars into a new mid-range system, only to see it worth about half that a year later. And a doorstop 3 years later.<p>Now we&#x27;re back to the point where almost any computer you buy will do a good job for common tasks (i.e. not gaming and crypto mining) for at least 5 years or more. My current machine is a 7-year-old laptop and runs all modern software just fine. Unthinkable just a couple decades ago!