Not just how it physically looks but, y'know, the vibes.
Athlon XP for me, easy.
the atom processors produced the BIGGEST variety of devices in the history of the personal computer platform. the like 2007-2011 era was populated with gobs of second- and third-gen netbooks, but also just bizarre little Gadgets that happened to run windows and linux (and in many cases, macos via hackintosh.) You could get palmtops with tiny thumb keyboards and smart barcode scanners and weird cop car tablets with strange docks. all kinds of wacky shit that ONLY existed because the atom made x86 easy to put in a package of any imaginable size and shape, and delivered almost as much battery life as arm platforms. and the performance was like... bad, yes, but like celeron bad. non-ideal, but completely reasonable if you weren't being deliberately obtuse about your expectations. the atom was the crowning achievement of mids. we stan a regular guy.
I've been making up for what I feel like is a partially lost childhood. Going back to hardware and software I was never aware of or had the chance to see or hear or use from around the turn of the century.
For this reason I've probably got to pick a specific date range of Pentiums. From Tulatin Pentium IIIs to the Pentium 4 just before the launch of the Core 2.
"It's all about the Pentiums, baby!" defined the era of hardware my brain goes to when I think 'computer'.
Rows and rows of identical HP or desktops, keyboards, mice and flat panel LCD monitors.
Computers look like a Middle School Computer lab circa 2006 and they all had Pentium 4s. Designs that even as the internals got better, the case stayed the same. Economies of scale and the drive to make a better, cheaper and more easily sold product were the norm.
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