So I'm a Gen Z'er, a bit on the older end of the spectrum. Currently finishing my bachelor's degree, if that gives you some perspective on my age. My dad actually owned a PS2 when I was born, but by the time I started playing video games it was on an Xbox 360. We didn't get the first "new" console that I actually remembered setting up until the Xbox One back in 2013. Ever since then, every time we got a new console, even just regular console re-releases like the PS4 Slim and the Xbox One X, it was such a huge hassle setting those things up. I remember 2 years ago when we got a PS5 for the family room back at my parent's house, it was an entire day-long process to set that damn thing up. You gotta plug it in, wait for it to do its own set up for like an hour, sign into all these BS accounts, get a million setting set up, deal with parental restrictions if you need those.
Last week I bought a PS2 Slim from my coworker for $50 and I'm still in awe of how easy it was to set up. I decided to get up early so I could spend all of my day off doing what I expected to be the usual "new console" troubleshooting… but nope. I just plugged it into the wall, then plugged the A/V cables into a ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter) I preemptively bought online. Then I plugged the controller in, turned it on, and voila! Literally just a working console. Only problem was that I forgot to get a memory card so I couldn't actually play the games that my coworker gave me, but hey it works!
It's just so incredible to me how modern technology is almost always such a major pain in the ass to set up. Every thing I own takes a million years and mind-numbing troubleshooting because there's always a problem. It feels like every time I use something old it might still have troubleshooting, (especially if it's from the 80s or 90s) but the set up process is 10 minutes at most. I remember the modem/router I bought a few months ago took two days of painful troubleshooting before I could even try to connect it to my internet plan.
P.S. It's also pretty amazing just how small this thing is. Even a PS4 Slim would dwarf this thing by a couple magnitudes. I set up tons of space on my side table expecting it to be as big as a PS4 was, but it's just sitting on there with a sizeable portion of empty space surrounding it
Edit: if you don't believe me then that's a you problem. I'm not sure why multiple people have seemed to think I'm making a generalization about millions of people because of my own experiences. This post is about my experiences and mine alone. You might have had better internet or never have run into problems with routers and that's wonderful. I'm so proud of you. But, this post is not talking about you, so save the ego.
I have been using computers and tech since I was super little, and I've actually noticed a trend toward simplification over time. I remember just to play dos games with sound you had to configure the sound card every time to use the correct channels and IRQ and what not… Now a days, everything is a simple button press to install and get going or plug n play.
The main difference between the setup of a PS2 and a PS5 is the internet stuff; the PS5 has more things to configure, but it's not particularly difficult to do (updates are time consuming tho). But if you had the modem/tried to play online with the PS2, the internet setup is more complicated than the PS5's since it requires manually forwarding ports on your router.
I mean you're probably older than me but I'd say the process is more streamlined, it just takes way longer since it seems like there's just so much to do. I doubt you had to make an IBM account to use your DOS computer, right?
Just the thought of that made me vomit a little. lol
The big thing I've run into is regular use vs occasional use. I only use my PS4 as a Blu-ray player these days, and each time I turn it on, it has to figure out if it shut down correctly last time(of course not). Then, after a memory check, it boots. I sign in, and then it yells at me that it has a mess of OS updates to install, which I don't want to wait for because I just want to watch this damn movie. Plus, my controller barely holds a charge anymore, and if I don't use the right USB controller plugged into the PS4, the controller doesn't pair and control the damn thing. If I were using the PS4 every day like I did back in 2016, a lot of these problems wouldn't be there, but because I boot it once every 3 months, it's a hassle.
I would love to be able to just slide in a disk and watch in the rare cases I've decided to. As it is, I'm about to buy a dedicated Blu-ray player instead of using the hardware I already have.
If you're genuinely not using it as a gaming machine, you could take it offline for use as a blu-ray player. That would at least let you skip the OS updates. And mine only complains about the shutdown if it comes unplugged or we lose power while it's on or in rest mode. It never complains if I fully shut it down from the menu.
Is that why I had no sound in redneck rampage sometimes?