My Windows 98 rig boots faster than my work laptop and I can prove it

I timed both last week at my kitchen table in Reno, 48 seconds for the old Pentium 3 tower with a spinning drive against 1 minute 52 for the new work laptop, and people keep telling me that is not a fair test. I know, okay, but here is the thing everyone gets wrong about old machines: they are not slow, they are just doing less. No 60 background services phoning home, no update check before the login screen shows up, just a boot and a desktop. I keep the tower on a KVM switch under my desk for old games and DOS stuff, and honestly it feels snappier than anything I own. Has anyone else measured a real boot time on their old gear, or am I just lucky with this one?