I don't remember almost ever using the top left "system" menu after Windows 3.x. Windows 9x (and NT starting from 4.0) had dedicated buttons for maximizing, minimizing and closing windows with a single click. Moving and resizing could be done by grabbing the title bar or corners, as they can today.
I don't remember exactly how the resizing and moving as found in the menu worked. Maybe they allowed for resizing/moving without aiming at the relatively small corners or the title screen. But for that I much prefer the traditional Unix style of alt + click/drag anywhere on a window moving the window. Alt + right mouse button similarly resizes it.
That is a feature I have missed on Windows.
I do seem to remember sometimes using a series a key presses to minimize the window through the system menu without using the mouse. But that was also due to not having an actual keyboard shortcut for doing that.
The system window was handy for retrieving windows that had somehow ended up offscreen. Alt-space, M for move, hit an arrow key once, and then the window follows your cursor and ends up on screen by default. Still works in modern versions of Windows - it's somewhat obsolete now you can use Win+arrow keys to move a window around, but it might still be useful if your window has ended up somewhere and you can't figure out where.
Imperfect graphics drivers and an environment that changes screens and resolutions a lot means that once every few months some fucking application is going to wander off where I can't get to it, and no amount of Windows+directionkey will move it somewhere usable.
I don't remember exactly how the resizing and moving as found in the menu worked. Maybe they allowed for resizing/moving without aiming at the relatively small corners or the title screen. But for that I much prefer the traditional Unix style of alt + click/drag anywhere on a window moving the window. Alt + right mouse button similarly resizes it.
That is a feature I have missed on Windows.
I do seem to remember sometimes using a series a key presses to minimize the window through the system menu without using the mouse. But that was also due to not having an actual keyboard shortcut for doing that.