[HalfIrish]

Well, CNet calls it a budget desktop:

https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-xps-420/specs/

Shipped with Vista and has worked flawlessly through Windows 7 and now 10.

[Spktyr]

And right here is the reason you found the experience acceptable:

“Intel Core 2 Quad E8500 / 3.16 GHz”

That makes it not exactly a mainstream box. The supermajority of mainstream boxes in that era were Core 2 Duos at best.