For example, I can read Baumgarten's metaphysics in original Latin on archive.org, before the internet people had to take months to reserve and arrange for the libraries to send them books, if it was possible at all.

This means I can go through all the literature I think could maybe be important and just check and read or move on. For scholarly work, this makes such a big difference that it makes me think the pre-internet PhDs are incomparable with post-internet ones.