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Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened?

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752 points dceddia | 3 comments | 23 Jun 23 14:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.894s | source
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reportgunner ◴[23 Jun 23 14:19 UTC] No.36447145[source]▶
Telemetry happened.
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jeffbee ◴[23 Jun 23 14:37 UTC] No.36447384[source]▶
If anything, doesn't this demonstrate that Windows lacks a sufficient amount of telemetry? If it was sending home stats about how long it takes to draw these windows, and profiles of what the program was doing, then they could target those and make it faster.
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1. yomlica8 ◴[23 Jun 23 14:49 UTC] No.36447568[source]▶
I see you're operating under the assumption that the purpose of telemetry is to improve the user experience. I'm not sure that is even a business goal inside Microsoft.

I think due to perverse incentives it causes the exact opposite to happen. Why did the Windows calculator need to be remade with a much slower and less responsive version? Telemetry probably showed the calculator was frequently used, so a Project Manager targeted it for "improvement" and it was then ruined.

replies(1): >>36447868 #
2. jeffbee ◴[23 Jun 23 15:07 UTC] No.36447868[source]▶
I don't know since I never use the Windows Calculator but it seems probable to me that the newer version has improvements that you don't need and therefore do not perceive. Perhaps it is more accessible to the blind, or the support for Urdu numerals is new. A lot of the reasons why old versions of Windows ran apps instantly is that they excluded the entire non-European world and did not even attempt to deal with complex languages.
replies(1): >>36452825 #
3. rep_lodsb ◴[23 Jun 23 22:08 UTC] No.36452825[source]▶
>A lot of the reasons why old versions of Windows ran apps instantly is that they excluded the entire non-European world and did not even attempt to deal with complex languages.

There was Windows 3.2 in 1994 (not to be confused with "Win32", despite the name of the HTML file): http://toastytech.com/guis/win32.html

Yes the western versions of Windows at the time didn't include support for Chinese (etc.) language. But there is really no reason why they should - if the user's language can be represented in an 8 bit codepage, why should they have to pay any price in performance for something they will never use?

Conversely, would a Chinese-speaking user prefer an operating system designed to support all the other languages that exist, with an implementation that is likely not as specifically tailored to their requirements?