"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" - it's more likely that Microsoft's PMs and developers felt swayed by new features and possibilities and when the issue of performance came up, it was "meh, the average computer selling today can cope with it" and therefore little thought was given to performance on older tech or tech that has most of its performance diverted to other tasks.
Indeed, it could be that. But I'm still wondering if maybe it was more deliberate than that. After all, it would have been a way to make more money for both Microsoft and Intel, so there was an incentive there. And the downside was very small (what was the average Windows user going to switch to between 1995 and 2005?)
