The reasoning behind it is back in those days only the really dedicated messed with it and you really had control (that and you really didn't have a choice but learn it if you wanted things to work). I'm older now, I fidget and fix things daily for work. I see daily how bad vendors and their QA are these days (everyone wants to blame it on complexity -- that is a double edged sword, quit bloating everything. When it comes to my own stuff, I just want things to work. I don't want to be bothered with forced updates, forced upgrades, etc. I want all that on my own time. P.S. As a whole maybe we're dumber because computers are much more mainstream, but I am still much more technology skilled now than I was back in the DOS days. Also, as everyone likes to state when it comes to bugs, things are way more complex now than they were then so maybe it just perception because the reality is over the years when Windows works, it has spoiled us.