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

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752 points dceddia | 1 comments | 23 Jun 23 14:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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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!

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dm319 ◴[23 Jun 23 14:48 UTC] No.36447558[source]▶
I was just reading this week about someone trying to get their UHK keyboard to launch an application on Windows by producing a sequence of keys starting with the Windows key. They needed to put in a delay to get this to work, and it reminded me of my frustrations launching programs in Windows as the start menu takes its sweet and variable time. Not least because I know the technology has been focused on getting adverts into the start menu.
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danuker ◴[23 Jun 23 14:53 UTC] No.36447636[source]▶
Isn't there still the Run dialog, Win+R in newer versions of Windows?
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1. mwcampbell ◴[24 Jun 23 12:50 UTC] No.36458273[source]▶
There is, but even that's not perfect. I have this stupid habit where I bring up the NVDA screen reader when I want it by typing Windows+R, typing "nvda", and pressing Enter. (I have low vision, and I use a screen reader sometimes, but not all the time.) I know, I really should use a desktop keyboard shortcut instead. Anyway, it's muscle memory, and I do it automatically, without watching for the Run dialog to appear. Only sometimes, the Run dialog doesn't appear fast enough, and maybe the "n" doesn't make it into that dialog's edit box. Or, on one or two embarrasing occasions, the Run dialog didn't grab focus at all, or at least not until way too late, and a message that just said "nvda" made it into a chat window.