Server 2003 was the peak of functionality and design. It did exactly what it was supposed to do and nothing else. It was easy to use and it did not pretend to be a tablet or a phone. It hummed along without thieving any data at all and just worked.
I miss the days of non-cloud. Cloud nonsense made my job more difficult and far, far more complex, contra the claims of MBAs and cloud propagandists everywhere. That’s a lost fight now, of course — everyone seems perfectly willing to cough up every last bit of data, self-determination and self-respect to unaccountable corporations.
Server 2003 wasn’t perfect and it was still part of Microsoft’s stack, and even then they were doing very despicable things to be fair.
But IT, tech and the world has gotten worse since then, and more hostile to the users on all sides.