Wow, great story. I have never ever owned a Windows or MSDOS machine and I am almost 50 years old. I have only owned Apples and Macs. I have never had to work on Window driven machines either. Sure I have mucked on a few here and there but usually to help my hapless mom (Who would call a TV repair man to plug in her "Not working Set".) with her stale beige box.
I still own a Tray loading Bondi Blue and a Flower Power slot-loading limited edition iMac. Also a 1Ghz eMac and a Powerbook 15 Ultra though I wish it was at least 1.87Ghz instead of the 1.67. That's the difference between 480p and 720p.
As for the Bondi it has 198 ram and can boot into X.1 Though it's not always happy about it in terms of speed. Still has it's original HD but the Flower Power which was at least 4-5 years newer than the Bondi had to have it's HD replaced.
Well not that anyone asked or cared but that's my take on older macs... though I wish I had now kept my SE's.
My Old iMac