To be fair, you sometimes had to open the machines and fiddle with irq's and other things I already forgot about.

I remember one machine, where I couldn't get sound blaster mouse, printer and modem to work at the same time.

I do agree that nowadays software companies expect to just own you if you use their products. The sad part is that what Microsoft is doing is "normal" or even minimal compared to what Apple or Google are doing. And it's getting worse all the time.

Fortunately Linux desktop is good enough this days for most tasks.