While the laptop was stolen our lowest RAM laptop was a 2006 Dell Inspiron e1505 with initially 512MB RAM and a bad HDD. To see what we could see, I installed the 120GB SSD and installed W10. It booted and got on the web in about 50 seconds.
Encouraged by the under one minute boot and on the web times (this was a cold boot!) I found an upgrade kit for cheap to take it to 1GB RAM. A cold boot (not sleep, not hibernation) shot down to 35 seconds from power on to getting a web page on screen.
So with that out of the way, what more does Microsoft have to do?
I have just (well quite a few minutes ago) opened my laptop to see a black screen - which would not respond to anything - so I did the last resort and turned the thing off. On restart I got the blue "configuring updates 100% completed", but of course it was still doing the circle thing.
I realised that when I used Windows 3.0 way back in 1990, on a 186 computer I would poke in the discs and wait a bit.
I remember using Pagemaker - I think a few years later on a 286 and could make a cup of instant coffee in another room while it printed out one A4 page.
Today we are so far advanced from that - OK my laptop is a few years old, it only has a quad core N2920, a couple of GB of memory and a 50 GB hard drive, and this was only an update to the anniversary Windows 10.
I sat and pondered, I cut my toenails (as one does while waiting for Windows to do it's things - including a poke around my big toe nail to check no in-growing nail (lost most of the feeling in it 20 years ago), collected the clippings and disposed of them before my wife realised where I had to rest my foot while doing the cutting, made a cup of camomile tea (I AM getting old) and still had time to ponder upon where we have got to.
As far as the Windows programs, oops apps, are concerned I use notepad usually for snippets of code and calculator. I don't use the dreadful Windows 10 email thing - so do not need the address book ("people" - UGH), I use better freeware for this as I do instead of Paint. Now I'm trying to think of what other apps (cringe) I actually use from Windows.
I do use Office - begrudgingly, so I still use 2013.
I'm getting slower with age - but Windows seems to doing so with greater enthusiasm than I am.
Of course there were snags - as in the Wickipedia article on 3.0 "It also significantly spurred sales of new PCs with larger RAM capacities as many older machines lacked the speed or memory to handle a demanding OS like Windows properly," so some things don't change in Microsoft who still refuse to create a version of 10 that will load onto tablets and netbooks with smallish memories.
Any other old codgers like to remind me where my memory has failed in this recollection?

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