> VMS terminal users had smooth responsive I/O all the time.

I recall that you could press Ctrl-T and it would instantly echo back some useful information about the running process, like CPU time and page faults. That was a nifty feature.

I loved VMS. Everything was so coherent, whereas Unix looked like it was hacked together overnight by a bunch of people who never talked to each other. These days, I like Unix, but back in the 80s, I only tolerated it.