In some ways, it's now, for a typical user.
PCs are so simple for the user that my gran can use Windows 10 for emails, youtube, all that stuff. Windows 10 updates itself, it protects itself, I didn't need to install any drivers etc. being "the computer nerd" in my family, it makes my life easier that it just works for her, and my Dad, and my fiancé, and my colleagues...
Also think about how crap cheap laptops and PCs used to be. Now a cheap laptop is entirely adequate. I have a two year old £200 12.1" netbook that is quite happy browsing, youtube, films, office stuff etc. I play old games on it too. Desktop CPUs are (/were, pre-COVID) cheap, RAM is cheap, storage is cheap. GPUs are stupid at the moment (even pre-COVID for the RTX2000 series) but a typical user does not need a GPU. You can buy a lot of PC for not much money (well, in 2019 early 2020) that will last a typical user many years.
A typical user has moved away from unreliable and physically large storage (DVDs, floppies and the drives themselves) and now downloads everything. Your harddrive is just a stick that sits on the motherboard. You can have a PC that is quite usable that is the size of a stick of chewing gum.
And let's not forget your typical user does most of their Personal Computing on a smart phone. If in 1997 you told me I could do gaming, emails, music, films, find information on literally anything I wanted, on a device that had (I dunno) 40x the processing power of my PC back then, that fits in my pocket, doesn't run out of battery a day and a half, is silent, cool, has a screen maybe 5x higher res than my PC monitor I would be amazed!
Gaming and advanced users on the other hand, that's a different story...
I would say Windows XP Core 2 Duo, 8800GT era was the best. Fast, cheap CPUs that are quite capable of running the net (which itself is expanding rapidly but before the scourge of social media) and games. They can be overclocked to give nearly a decade of future proofing. Late XP is a slim, reliable OS that advanced users can navigate with ease. There are exciting developments in graphics cards whilst not featuring the current 🤣 pricing. Games themselves are evolving in a good direction - Bioshock, Crysis, Far Cry (retaining depth whilst the graphics and sound have improved rapidly), whilst pre-dating predatory DLC practices and Live Service bullcrap.
Ryzen 3700X | 16GB 3600MHz RAM | AMD 6800XT | 2Tb NVME SSD | Windows 10
AMD DX2-80 | 16MB RAM | STB LIghtspeed 128 | AWE32 CT3910
I have a vacancy for a main Windows 98 PC