Going from Sega Megadrive to PlayStation back in the nineties. True 3d graphics on a home console blew my little teenage mind. Lara Croft. Wipeout. Metal Gear Solid! Good times.

Internal SSD with the operating system on it. No other upgrade I've made to my PC has ever been so substantial.

Linux?

Agree with:

Dishwasher (really just toss dishes in as you use them, close and run at night, put 'em away in morning, it's magic. I didn't have one till I was almost 50)

Electric bike (I hate biking but this is like a dream of a bike)

Roomba (wood floors no grit)

And the mesh wifi system that lets me easily see and address the rare hiccups it has.

Bicycle technology. Suddenly I could travel three times the speed of walking for the same effort.

Semi professional wifi(networking) at home (TP link omada or ubiquiti) and just buying excessive amounts of access points in my home.

Fuck you, low wifi signal. Fuck you, crashed router.

Steam owen. Haven't reheated my food un the microwave ever since.

When I got my first HD tv. I had previously been playing oblivion on Xbox 360 on an crt tv and when I setup the HD I was absolutely blown away by the clarity. I remember my stupid fucking ex-wife trying to tell me there was no difference between the two.

My first very small mp3 player, something from sony. It was amazing.

My first digital camera, just being able to see your picture after shooting them. being able to delete photos was revolutionary.

My first wifi access point, having Internet at home without cable.

My first phone that could load msn messager. Also pretty cool.

Setting up my own NAS and offside backup.

Big project for sure, but being in control of my vital backups was important for me. Additionally the up front costs is lower than the subscriptions I would have needed.

Upgrading my computer's primary storage from a hard disk (HDD) to a solid state drive (SSD). Really young folks on here have no idea how amazing it was for computers to go from taking minutes to start up to taking seconds.

Buying my first cell phone, which was a Nokia smartphone, in 2003. Having email and useful applications in my pocket, including maps and web search.

Affordable solar panels and batteries. With this we were able to life off-grid surrounded by nature.

GPS was life-changing. (Yes, I am that old.) It used to be necessary to find printed maps of wherever you were going, which wasn't always easy. Then you had to figure out a route. The hardest part was often the last bit of the trip, since you weren't likely to have a detailed map of your destination city. An if you got lost, figuring out where you were was sometimes quite difficult.

People tend to think of it as mostly affecting longer trips, but finding new addresses in a city was at least as much of an issue. When I lived in the bay area I had a Thomas guide that was 3/4" of an inch thick, just for finding my way around town.

Google Home did when it first came out. Unfortunately, the quality has been consistently tanking since inception

Beetlecrab Audio Tempera is the most inspiring electronic musical instrument I own. I got it in April, and I'm still finding new ways to use it. It does so much.

Oxi One really is the hardware sequencer to rule them all. Though I'm sure you could get by with a Hapax or Deluge if you don't mind spending twice as much.

Not a purchase, but Csound has always been an invaluable companion to my music making process. It's also entirely free and open-source.