This got me thinking about what we were using when I was in high school. I had to do a little searching, but have decided that it had to be the really low-end IBM PS/2 model 25, (the monochrome model). You'd think that the powers-that-were then would have cheaped out all the way, but no. All the machines did have the added 3.5" diskette drive (they all had 2 diskette drives). Emphasis here, the things weren't new by the time I was using them. We had a class on using, get this, Microsoft Works 2.0 for DOS. Windows 3.0 would have been available then, but I imagine running it on those machines would have been awful without a hard drive. We were loading DOS and Works from a network. I do recall them booting relatively quickly. Less than a minute to be up and running Works. However, I recall being told the "network is out" one day and being handed a DOS boot diskette and a single diskette for Works and it taking over 5 minutes to get going

I've actually been gratefully over the years for that class. It is rather remarkable to think how much using that software prepared me for using Microsoft Office later.

- wks2.png (3.3 KiB) Viewed 18468 times

- Works 2.0 for DOS - Editing.png (6.82 KiB) Viewed 18468 times
Drop-down menus, working with several items on the screen...
Note: The screenshots aren't mine. Also, try to imagine them in monochrome gloriousness. Yeah, I was also a keyboard-shortcut-using-kid.