The Silver Centurion had bulkier boots and gauntlets as well.

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Not really. The "classic" armor had those hollowed out cylinder things at the top of the boots and gloves and they stuck out farther than the ones on the Silver armor. ( Especially when Layton was inking it.) The silver armor's gloves/ boots simply extended to the wrist/ ankle.

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Have to say I can't disagree more. If your catering to 30+ year fans you're in deep trouble. Especially with science fiction where the once futuristic can often look extremely quaint as our view of the future changes, because sometimes the technology we think is right around the corner ends up being far more complicated than we could imagine and we dial our expectations down.... where are our flying cars and jetpacks? Oh, right, those are completely impractical... nevermind.

Take the original Star Trek. It was created at a time in which computers were mysterious things that had flashing lights and gave read-outs that only trained technicians could read. So they come up with a sleeker version of then-modern computers.

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First, try reading what I wrote, not what you want to think I wrote. I am not talking about "predictive" technology. Stan had Iron Man's armor powered by transistors, which was not even accurate technology for the time! But the idea behind the technology in comics is not to be predictive, but merely to be beyond what we have at the time. (When I joined the Industry, it was common to say the technology was at least fifteen to 20 years ahead of what we had. Not in a predictive sense, but in an isn't-that-cool sense.) Thus, even Iron Man's clunky gray armor was far ahead of anything that could actually be made in the 1960s.

The "specialized" suits reverse this, and do, indeed, attempt to be predictive. Read the OHOTMU entry for Iron Man and find it full to bursting with "real world" science. Cold fusion was in the headlines when the entry was written, so Stark's suit becomes powered by cold fusion.

This is pandering the the thirty-somethings, who cannot accept the "Because It Does" answer to how something works. These are the ones who want to know what kind of spider bit Peter Parker, or where the Thing's fourth finger disappeared to. And those are NOT the people we should be playing to, but the "specialized" suits do exactly that.

Elsewhere, apparently you were watching STAR TREK beamed in from some parallel universe, since the computer tech I saw on TOS was not only surprisingly predictive, it did not require trained technicians to work it. Only the ability to say "Computer on".

The "classic" armor had those hollowed out cylinder things at the top of the boots and gloves

Agreed.

and they stuck out farther than the ones on the Silver armor.

Maybe.

( Especially when Layton was inking it.)

I'd call this special pleading.

The silver armor's gloves/ boots simply extended to the wrist/ ankle.

...and I think they look bulkier that way.

I also think the head was generally portrayed as being wider than the classic armour.

Edited to add: I like the Silver Centurion armour. But it does look bulkier to me in several ways, and not just the backpack and the shoulder guards.

Except for the shoulder pads and "backpack", the Red-and-Silver armor doesn't seem to me to be bulkier than the Red-and-Gold.

Based on the computer graphic illustration above, yes...but based on the way the red-and-silver armor was actually drawn at the time (in West Coast Avengers and Iron-Man) it was definitely bulkier. In fact, the upper body and torso were definitely bigger (almost like Tony had put on 50 pounds of muscle) and thicker.

In fact, even the head and neck were thicker. Here's a good example:

I definitely prefer the sleeker yellow and gold (alhtough I REALLY liked how JB did the silver/red armor in that Hulk issue where Hulk fought Iron Man, Namor, Hercules and Wonder-Man).

It still looks like Iron Man to me (a lot more than some of the later articulated red and gold armours, for example) and I had no problem enjoying the Silver Centurion stories at the time...... BUT (and it's a fairly big but)  it fairs poorly when you compare it to the classic red and gold version, because that version is simply better and more iconic.