From startup to shutdown, loading Windows 3.1, MS Word, and MS Excel, on a computer several orders of magnitude slower and with 1000x less RAM than a modern PC. Note how snappy everything is. iT's dOinG mOre No it isn't. We don't have to live like this!

MS-DOS but as an electron app

Most evil reply award

don't make me port it all to typescript

PC specs (emulated in 86Box - need to get my 486 up and running but it's in the closet and I didn't have time today) 486DX2/66 16MB RAM VLB SVGA CL-5428 graphics (running at 1024x768 resolution in the video) VLB IDE controller with 504MB main drive, emulated at *4500RPM

You don't have to go back this far. I remember on 64-bit Windows Vista, it took only 6 seconds from hitting the power button to being fully up, logged in, and not touching the hard drive any more. Office 2003 apps would open almost instantly. And the frosted glass-looking title bars and window borders were a thing of beauty... Vista got a bad rap, but damn was it fast

As long as you had enough RAM and an SSD. Win7 was the same way.

@strong98223 Win 7 pro and 2000 pro were the best windows operating systems to date imho.

@saveusculture Yes, Windows 2000 was fantastic also. I basically never ran XP - I ran 2000 until Vista.

@GingerSherpa @saveusculture I ran 2000, until Windows 7. Then kept on going with Win7, until end of last year, switched to Debian 13/Linux. Now thinking of switching to Devuan, because of this systemd stuff.

@GingerSherpa @saveusculture My attempts to completely switch to Linux have been unsuccessful, mostly because I love Visual Studio. But I do use it also. I'm a big fan of MX Linux, which doesn't use systemd.

@LimalSki @saveusculture My problem is my 20 year addiction to Quicken.

@LimalSki @saveusculture Looking on WineHQ, it looks like Quicken is at least mostly supported under Wine. And the test results are from a pretty old Wine version so it might work perfectly. Maybe worth a shot 🤷

Nothing more infuriating than the micro-delay between hitting a keystroke and seeing the character appear on the screen on a machine that's like 1000x more powerful.

I remember back that far. My 486SX-25 would take 15-20 minutes to boot up and load Windows in its default config. I would literally turn on my computer and go to get a drink to waste time while it booted. This is NOT how fast they were back then.

Let me guess. 4MB of RAM, Win95, a 250MB hard drive with lots of swap configured, various startup programs, and the IE 5.5 update installed.

That was August of 1994. 4MB of RAM, 107MB HDD, DOS 5.0, Win 3.1, no extra programs and no IE.

Something was dreadfully wrong with your installation for it to take that long to boot. I’ve been using computers like that frequently since I was a kid and even the most screwed up install doesn’t take *that* long. I have however encountered DHCP issues causing “long boots”

HDDs were very slow back then, with about 0.5MB/s transfer rate.

Do you want me to demonstrate on real hardware with real spinning rust to you that what I said is true? Your system was royally messed up in some way. Sucks but it absolutely must have been true.

I currently have a Athlon 64 3700 "retro" gaming machine in the corner of my room, right next to my Ryzen 7800X3D main gaming machine. I have it to play my old games like Starfleet Command and Descent. I boot it from MMC, so it's not solidly like those old machines, but it still takes a good 5-7 minutes to load up. A regular HDD from the era would be a lot longer.

5-7 minutes? What on earth are you doing with your computers? I use variously Win 3.1, Win95, and XP depending on what I’m doing at the moment frequently on hardware older than that for productivity and games and I simply never encounter that kind of boot delay.

Yea but what did the subscription for that cost per month? Probably like $500.

Subscription? Hahahahaha

Electron apps using 2GB of RAM to display a text field isn't "doing more." We let devs trade user experience for development speed and called it progress.

Modern Windows 11 is unquestionably doing more than Windows 3.11. How much of that needs to be done or is useful given the spec requirements and bugginess is what is in question.

That was what I meant by "no it isn't"

You should have seen what it was like to use an Amiga or Acorn Archimedes in the 1990s when the GUI OSes were built into ROM! From a cold boot you'd be on the desktop in 3 to 5 seconds.

Windows 10 Pro installed on an NVME is like ten seconds from Power On to desktop. Truly, the greatest OS Microsoft ever made.

Buddy, your mom would run that fast on an NVMe drive.

Yes well, she isn't the greatest OS Microsoft ever created so we'll consider her at a natural disadvantage

Crazy how the m series Mac’s have taken up computing slack. My M2 Mac mini boots in 5 seconds to the desktop. It’s wild

Everything was written in C and Assembly then. Now, it all 20 layers deep of garbage abstraction layers powered by code the CPU doesn’t even execute natively.

Linux is today's answer.

Better than Windows by far but still not the ultimate answer. Even Windows 3.1 and 95 weren’t super great, I just like to highlight how slow UIs have gotten over the years.

Built by men who cared deeply about their craft.

Twelve year old PC. Windows 11 runs fine even though this proc doesn't support the magical goodness. CPU-Z TXT Report ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Binaries ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CPU-Z version2.16.0 Processors ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CPU Groups1 CPU Group 04 threads, mask=0xF Number of sockets1 Number of threads4 APICs ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Socket 0 -- Core 0 (ID 0) -- Thread 00 -- Core 1 (ID 1) -- Thread 12 -- Core 2 (ID 2) -- Thread 24 -- Core 3 (ID 3) -- Thread 36 Timers ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACPI timer3.580 MHz Perf timer10.000 MHz Sys timer1.000 KHz Processors Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Socket 1ID = 0 Number of cores4 (max 4) Number of threads4 (max 4) ManufacturerGenuineIntel NameIntel Core i5 4670K CodenameHaswell SpecificationIntel(R) Core(TM) i5-4670K CPU @ 3.40GHz Package (platform ID)Socket 1150 LGA (0x1) CPUID6.C.3 Extended CPUID6.3C Core SteppingC0 Technology22 nm TDP Limit84.0 Watts Tjmax100.0 �C Core Speed3603.5 MHz Multiplier x Bus Speed36.0 x 100.1 MHz Base frequency (cores)100.1 MHz Stock frequency3400 MHz Instructions setsMMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T, VT-x, AES, AVX, AVX2, FMA3 Microcode Revision0x28 L1 Data cache4 x 32 KB (8-way, 64-byte line) L1 Instruction cache4 x 32 KB (8-way, 64-byte line) L2 cache4 x 256 KB (8-way, 64-byte line) L3 cache6 MB (12-way, 64-byte line) Temperature 043 degC (109 degF) (Package) Temperature 143 degC (109 degF) (Cores (Max)) Temperature 243 degC (109 degF) (Core #0) Temperature 343 degC (109 degF) (Core #1) Temperature 440 degC (104 degF) (Core #2) Temperature 540 degC (104 degF) (Core #3) Voltage 01.08 Volts (VID) Voltage 1+0.00 Volts (IA Offset) Voltage 2+0.00 Volts (GT Offset) Voltage 3+0.00 Volts (LLC/Ring Offset) Voltage 4+0.00 Volts (System Agent Offset) Power 0038.74 W (Package) Power 0127.95 W (IA Cores) Power 02n.a. (GT) Power 036.50 W (Uncore) Power 044.30 W (DRAM) Clock Speed 03603.45 MHz (Core #0) Clock Speed 13603.45 MHz (Core #1) Clock Speed 23603.45 MHz (Core #2) Clock Speed 33603.45 MHz (Core #3) Clock Speed 4100.10 MHz (CPU BCLK) Clock Speed 5n.a. (SOC BCLK) Core 0 max ratio38.00 (effective 36.00) Core 1 max ratio38.00 (effective 36.00) Core 2 max ratio38.00 (effective 37.00) Core 3 max ratio38.00 (effective 36.00) Thread dumps ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CPU Thread (0, 0x0) APIC ID0 TopologyProcessor ID 0, Core ID 0, Thread ID 0 Cache descriptorLevel 1, D, 32 KB, 2 thread(s) Cache descriptorLevel 1, I, 32 KB, 2 thread(s) Cache descriptorLevel 2, U, 256 KB, 2 thread(s) Cache descriptorLevel 3, U, 6 MB, 16 thread(s) CPUID 0x000000000x0000000D0x756E65470x6C65746E0x49656E69 0x000000010x000306C30x001008000x7FDAFBBF0xBFEBFBFF 0x000000020x760363010x00F0B6FF0x000000000x00C10000 0x000000030x000000000x000000000x000000000x00000000 0x000000040x1C0041210x01C0003F0x0000003F0x00000000 0x000000040x1C0041220x01C0003F0x0000003F0x00000000 0x000000040x1C0041430x01C0003F0x000001FF0x00000000 0x000000040x1C03C1630x02C0003F0x00001FFF0x00000006 0x000000050x000000400x000000400x000000030x00042120 0x000000060x000000770x000000020x000000090x00000000 0x000000070x000000000x000027AB0x000000000x9C000600 0x000000080x000000000x000000000x000000000x00000000 0x000000090x000000000x000000000x000000000x00000000 0x0000000A0x073008030x000000000x000000000x00000603 0x0000000B0x000000010x000000010x000001000x00000000 0x0000000B0x000000040x000000040x000002010x00000000 0x0000000C0x000000000x000000000x000000000x00000000 0x0000000D0x000000070x000003400x000003400x00000000 0x0000000D0x000000010x000000000x000000000x00000000 0x0000000D0x000001000x000002400x000000000x00000000 0x800000000x800000080x000000000x000000000x00000000 0x800000010x000000000x000000000x000000210x2C100800 0x800000020x65746E490x2952286C0x726F43200x4D542865 0x800000030x356920290x3736342D0x43204B300x40205550 0x800000040x342E33200x7A4847300x000000000x00000000 0x800000050x000000000x000000000x000000000x00000000 0x800000060x000000000x000000000x010060400x00000000 0x800000070x000000000x000000000x000000000x00000100 0x800000080x000030270x000000000x000000000x00000000 MSR 0x0000001B0x000000000xFEE00900 MSR 0x0000003A0x000000000x00000001 MSR 0x000000350x000000000x00040004 MSR 0x000001A00x000000000x00850089 MSR 0x000000CE0x0

more like a lot of letters. just CPUID

I still have to reinstall my printer drivers every few months. Nothing has changed.

It is, in fact, doing more.

Lmao

My Alpine Linux with XFCE starts faster than that.

On a computer that is 1000x as fast as this one.

This video is faster than real time. You can tell in the blinking rate of the cursor, typing speed at the prompt, and the sound of CHIMES.WAV that it plays at startup.... even though that was the shutdown tune.

But Windows 3.1 was buggy. Crashes were frequent. When we moved to Win95 things got far more stable.

Yes, although a bit slower. Win98 was slower still, because they turned the file manager and the desktop into a web browser. It’s been downhill for the UI ever since.

When I started programming 20 or so years ago, loading stuff and putting things to work was almost instant I always wondered why other programs were on loading screens for so long and thought they put random sleeps just to appear as doing something

Why are we getting killed with bloatware man?! We used to squeeze every last drop out of the hardware we had! Purpose built and optimized. Now we’re pissing into the wind.

This video has me fired up. Bout to fire up my Commodore 64 and show yall Geos OS with GeoPublish and GeoWrite. They took so much. Windows 11 is a surveillance platform with hundreds of processes out of the box. Debloat helps but it is still baked in and one update away from being reverted.

@BobSummerwill Interested to see this. I have a C64 as well but have not had the time to get into using it yet so my familiarity level with it is zero.

It wasn't actually this fast on a DX4-100 . . . there's evidently some sort of issue with the emulator speed . . . but yes, it was faster and the UI's internal consistency meant it made more sense.

Turbo button on or off? 🙂

We had this exact spec system when I was in grad school and used it to type papers and play games. It was NEVER this fast.

At Intel in the 90's, we used to say "Thank God for Microsoft. No one else could use up all this memory and computing power just to run Solitaire"

@InsaneMegaCD Have you tried Linux? It’s pretty fast and lightweight, it’s at a nice point where it looks very modern but is very boring and solid like computer used to be.

Developers back then cared about the applications they built. Now its features no one wants and using the latest tech stack even if its not needed. Really, Notepad with CoPilot features built in? Can we just have text files?

yeah and you bought it once and it was yours

1992: 386 PCs but clever programmers. 2026: We have faster computers but lazy programmers…

Windows was NEVER snappy. Look at what the Amiga could do years later and how much faster it was

oh I know why this looks normal to me, after w3.1 I went to linux! (microsoft took too long to come out with another descent OS)

I miss Word 2.0.