I went with a TI-89 and had one good friend in HS that had one as well. This would have been late 99-00, I believe.
Fondest memories were recreating my school C++ project in TI BASIC and showing it to my teacher, using utilities to restore apps and data after a "reset" in math class so I could skip over memorizing equations, grayscale erotica, and of course Phoenix.
I recently reset a Dell laptop for a friend. Dual core, 8gb RAM, HDD (not SSD), can run Windows 11, so I ran the built-in recovery feature and it took almost 2 days to just get Windows 10 updated.
When I saw it was still absolutely crap and unusable, I considered putting Linux on it, but didn't want to end up as support, so...
Long story short, a clean install of Windws 11 was functional. Updates took forever and a day. The computer itself takes about 6-8 minutes to become usable on boot, but once everything is cached into RAM, it's usable.
More usable initially than my work issued Dell (when I actually worked at Dell) that within a week I cloned and installed an SSD on, probably breaking all kinds of terminable policies. So,story time:
I did some silly things in those 4 years there to bypass bureaucracy: Cloned my entire laptop into a VM to have a secondary method of accessing work stuff. Created an entire test lab using unauthorized disk cloning into VMs for remote access. Disabled auto updates by management software so PCs wouldn't be kicked off the network. Probably set off all kinds of alarms. Would occasionally reenable to keep VM authorized.
The kicker is that I was recognized company-wide for creating something useful out of basically nothing but my time and curiosity. Got a bonus for it, on top of it.
To your point, my 96GB DDR5 24-core desktop-replacement "gaming" laptop, when used regularly, with a decent amount of startup apps, still struggles to be responsive on boot. There is a lot of bloat I don't want to get rid of because they provide updates and performance features. At startup, I'm usually at 14 GB RAM used, which is nuts. Not sure how to fix this trend.
In hindsight, I would have gone for an AMD deskop replacement laptop instead of the Dell Intel-based gaming laptop that I purchased last year. The CPU is the best the Raptor Lake line has to offer in mobile format (i7-13900hx) but there is no conceivable way for the laptop, ast thick as it is, to cool it beyond very bursty workloads.
This affects the laptop with other issues, like severe thermal throttling both in CPU and GPU.
A utility like throttlestop allows me to place maximums on power usage so I don't hit the tjMax during regular use. That is around 65-70W for the CPU - which can burst to 200+W in its allowed "Performance" mode. Absolutely nuts.
I used a privacy.com Mastercard linked to my bank account for Oracle's payment method to upgrade to PAYG. It may have changed, this was a few months ago. Set limit to 100, they charged and reverted $100.
Sort of related, but in the two or three times I've lucid dreamt, one of them was flying and having relatively functional control of my direction. Not sure how/why my brain rendered this sensation having never experienced it in real life, but it felt strange and novel and not easy to direct.
It was akin to a sensation of VR games where my mind seems to interpolate real-life expectations with visual input, but not quite. Not quite "brain-computer-interfaces", but perhaps a glimpse with current tech.
I'm not well-versed enough on sci-fi to be able to connect more dots than this, but I am assuming these are common tropes.
The Mass Effect series describes the Reapers as (copied from masseffect.fandom.com - I <3 this game's lore):
"The Reapers are a highly-advanced machine race of synthetic-organic starships. The Reapers reside in dark space: the vast, mostly starless space between galaxies. They hibernate there, dormant for fifty thousand years at a time, before returning to the galaxy...the Reapers spare little concern for whatever labels other races choose to call them, and merely claim that they have neither beginning nor end."
The other pop-sci-fi analogue I can think of is The Borg.
My experience with GFN has been MUCH better than I expected. I've also come across similar sentiments as yours, which leads me to think it's a proximity to the DC issue.
E.g., my RTT to my ISP's gateway, on average, fluctuates between 8-11 ms (currently ~14 according to pfSense) and a ping to google's closest response is usually about the same. I'm sure others have it better, but I am quite impressed, given a little bit of this latency would probably be eliminated by not having a virtualized router as is the case with my setup.
Twitchy MP shooters and twitchy platformers are the 2 subgenres that aren't suited for this arrangement. Most everything else is perfectly fine (under the aforementioned ideal conditions).
Haven't tried Stadia, but I can certainly vouch for GFN. The lag is comparable to consoles on TV (and in some games, better), so while it would be a handicap in PC-centric fast-paced games, I was damn impressed with it. If I had a reason to pay the $5/month premium for unlimited gameplay away from home, I certainly would.
Fondest memories were recreating my school C++ project in TI BASIC and showing it to my teacher, using utilities to restore apps and data after a "reset" in math class so I could skip over memorizing equations, grayscale erotica, and of course Phoenix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke6DnczjaK0