It's hard to remember what life was like 20 years ago. And it's harder still to figure out how we got anything done back then.

"I can't imagine life without the PC, e-mail, my DVR, air conditioning in my car, home and work," says Brett Case, a LAN coordinator at Ross Stores in Pleasanton, Calif. "Did I mention life would be miserable without DVR?"

The benefits of tech tools aside, more than 70% of Network World readers surveyed said their standard of living is better today than it was 20 years ago. But it's not all good news. Some 11% said their standard of living hasn't changed, and 10% said they are worse off (8% are too young to remember).

Asked whether they would do it differently if they could do it all again, fewer than half of the respondents said they would pursue the same path in technology. A whopping 37% said they like the tech field but wish they had taken a different path, while 12% said they would eschew tech altogether, and the rest weren't sure.

The survey went on to ask readers to reflect on a range of subjects, including who have been the top industry visionaries and what were the biggest tech flops.

Not surprisingly, respondents picked Bill Gates as the individual who has made the biggest impact in the last 20 years, though some said he was just in the right place at the right time.

David Green, president of NetGreen Consulting in Bluffton, S.C., sees both sides of the argument. "Bill Gates is the ultimate example of brains and luck meeting under happy circumstances."

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Other respondents said Gates was brilliant in how he built Microsoft, especially with the various acquisitions over the years, but they stopped short of calling him a visionary.

"He outbluffed IBM and snookered Apple," said Harold Finz, who is a software architect at CitiGroup in California. "But he's not a visionary. He always let someone else pave the way, take the chances and then he'd either learn from their mistakes or else buy his way into the field."

Thom Count, a network consultant at Genzyme in Cambridge, Mass., gave Gates more credit, saying Gates' predictions have all come to fruition. He said that even when Gates was producing Basic for CPM machines, he could see the bigger picture.

Although not listed in the survey, readers wrote in Cisco CEO John Chambers, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Intel's Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore as other industry visionaries.