←back to thread

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

(twitter.com)
752 points dceddia | 3 comments | 23 Jun 23 14:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.221s | source
Show context
yomlica8 ◴[23 Jun 23 14:32 UTC] No.36447314[source]▶
It blows my mind how unresponsive modern tech is, and it frustrates me constantly. What makes it even worse is how unpredictable the lags are so you can't even train yourself around it.

I was watching Halt and Catch Fire and in the first season the engineering team makes a great effort to meet something called the "Doherty Threshold" to keep the responsiveness of the machine so the user doesn't get frustrated and lose interest. I guess that is lost to time!

replies(18): >>36447344 #>>36447520 #>>36447558 #>>36447932 #>>36447949 #>>36449090 #>>36449889 #>>36450472 #>>36450591 #>>36451868 #>>36452042 #>>36453741 #>>36454246 #>>36454271 #>>36454404 #>>36454473 #>>36462340 #>>36469396 #
1. barbariangrunge ◴[24 Jun 23 01:22 UTC] No.36454473[source]▶
I’ve been sharing videos like this for a month or two

I have a 2015 MacBook Air I abandoned recently for being so painfully slow to use that I had almost not touched it for months. I have an iPad Air 2 that is basically unusable at this point. Both are 2-3 orders of magnitudes faster than those old computers that work instantly.

But windows and web apps are super slow now too

Think of all the landfills and wasted work hours earning the money needed to fill those landfills. The heavy and rare metals

This is proof that if computers were 10x faster, they would run slower than ours today, because in the past we’ve seen that be true over and over. The software companies will just make heavier and heavier programs and operating systems until we have gained nothing but a significant amount of co2 emissions

replies(2): >>36455917 #>>36458887 #
2. accrual ◴[24 Jun 23 05:45 UTC] No.36455917[source]▶
Aren't those devices also running non-contemporary OSs? I wonder if installing the factory OS would make them seem fast again, albeit at the cost of 8 years of software updates.
3. Aerbil313 ◴[24 Jun 23 14:19 UTC] No.36458887[source]▶
This is only true as the software industry keeps piling abstractions on top of abstractions, as Moore’s law allows it. But we’re reaching the end of the Moore and already feeling the effects of it, for example Javascript frameworks priding themselves on performance instead of features.

Give it some time for the industry to finally mature.