Nitter thread from Julio Merino on application responsiveness in early 2000’s Windows computers versus modern Windows computers. Videos available in linked thread.
Please remind me how we are moving forward. In this video, a machine from the year ~2000 (600MHz, 128MB RAM, spinning-rust hard disk) running Windows NT 3.51. Note how incredibly snappy opening apps is.
Now look at opening the same apps on Windows 11 on a Surface Go 2 (quad-core i5 processor at 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM, SSD). Everything is super sluggish.
For those thinking that the comparison was unfair, here is Windows 2000 on the same 600MHz machine. Both are from the same year, 1999. Note how the immediacy is still exactly the same and hadn’t been ruined yet.
I recently set up a Windows 2000 computer with a 7W Via Eden CPU that scores 82 on Passmark, compared to about 46,000 for my main computer’s 5950x. The Windows 2000 PC has an old IDE HDD and 512MB RAM. Although this computer couldn’t run any remotely recent OS (even Antix Linux brought it to its knees), it flies along with Windows 2000 and feels just as fast for everyday things as new PCs do. I put MS Office 97 on there and I use it for distraction-free writing since it’s not networked.
The problem is that we’re being given vast amounts of CPU cycles and RAM, but our operating systems are taking them away again before the user gets a say. Windows 11 does so much in the background that it no longer feels like I am in control of the computer. I get to use it when it doesn’t have anything more important that Microsoft or other software vendors want it to do. Linux is still better, but there’s a whole lot more going on in the background of a typical system then there used to be.