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.

Is the comparison between a desktop and a laptop fair? I think it is. Both machines are running "stock" OSes and I'm comparing the same apps. I could have recorded the same on my Mac Pro with Windows 11, sure, but I'll tell you that the results would be similar.

I'll try to spend some time this weekend on a fair(er) comparison: Win2k on this machine from the year 2000 vs. Win11 on my 2013 Mac Pro... but it's going to be a waste of time because I know the experience will reflect the same differences 😬

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.

So this is what a hit tweet looks like, huh... I don't have a SoundCloud but because we are in the context of retro computer experiences in this thread, you might enjoy something I'm building!

Because nuance is impossible in Twitter and it was also impossible to predict that this would spread out so much and land on HN... here are some more thoughts:

Oh, and one more thing. Yes, yes, the Surface Go 2 is underpowered and all you want. But look at this video. Same steps on a 6-core Mac Pro @ 3.5GHz with 32GB of RAM. All apps cached. Note how they get painted in chunks. It's not because of animations or mediocre hardware.

And... one more thing? To those saying: "it's the higher 4K resolution!" or "it's the good-looking animations!" or "it's the pretty desktop background!"—no, they aren't at fault. See, the slowness is still visible with all of these disabled. In the end... blog post coming soon.

The blog post is here, for completeness. Enjoy the (long) read!

But is the 2000s computer running ads in the background, auto updating, running a virus scan, and sending telemetry all at once?

It's so nice nowadays, isn't it?!