The era of the all-in-one hardware and software solution has been gone for at least the last ten years

You know that era may be dead, but I cannot think of a better era to be a technical person. Sure the web is great but things where still exotic then. There was a plethora of exotic machines that where new and novel. I remember the first DEC machine I ran into, not to mention SGI, Amiga, Symbolics LISP machine each new job was filled with wonder lust for someone just out of school. I would not trade that experience for the world and am glad that there was a time when integrated machines reigned.