How you remember the C64 depends on when you got into it. I had an 800 in 1981 and some of my friends had C64's starting in late 1982 or early 1983. At that time, the 1541 was miserable. You'd start a game loading and walk away for a while. If you didn't hear any activity for a while, you'd pop the door open to see if the drive went nuts meaning it was still loading. If you didn't have good ventilation around the drive (like shoved onto a desk shelf with other stuff around it), it would get incredibly hot and and stop working. I didn't know anyone with a Fast Load until a couple years later (it was released in 1984), and even then it didn't work with everything. At least a software solution was possible, though.