Hmm, how many here were from the Windows 3.1 era???? Hmm?
I had a system running a DX50 chip, Windows 3.11, 4 megs of ram and it would boot in about 20 seconds from switch on. Installed 8 megs of ram, 8 meg Diamond Monster 8 meg video card and it flew through Quake and Quake 2! Dropped my boot speed down to about 12 seconds!
So to the OP, yep, I agree man!! I still have an ole Packard Bell sporting a Pentium 133 and Windows 98SE that boots faster than most modern PC's. It is running a Voodoo 5500 3DFX video card. 12meg card if I remember correctly.