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! https://www.endbasic.dev/

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: https://news.ycombinator.com/i...

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! https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-...

@jmmv Something about Windows 11 is freakishly sluggish compared to Windows 10. The entire experience is terrible in comparison. It's also much harder to find certain settings, and its bloated. Really bloated with things that make it even slower.

@yugene_says Agree. 10 was certainly better on this hardware, but not much more so.

@jmmv I worked on NT 3.51. We used to DREAM of 128MB of memory. We were trying to run in 8MB,I think we settled for 16. Could fit entirely in processor cache now.

@jvert Yes. As I mentioned later in the thread and in the referenced article, the original comparison videos were... akin to shit-posting. But you'll see that I repeated the exact same experiment with Windows 2000 and I got the same results. Software today IS massively bloated.

@jmmv okay now open a csv with over 3000 rows

@m18coppola I take it that you are joking, but in all seriousness... many web apps warn you if you attempt to open a "large" text file (over 1 MB!) -- or simply grind the browser to a halt if you try 😞

@jmmv I recently installed fedora and nautilus opened with 0 delay and it's overall pretty smooth. Wayland still has a few problems but it was pretty pleasant especially compared to windows

@MelloyLucy Fedora is great. I've had my gripes with Gnome and its performance in the past, but it runs very well on hardware from 10+ years ago.

@jmmv This is not windows nt. It looks like windows 3.x. I've used it. It was very very very slow. It had bad multitasking. No security mechanisms and was horrible in every imaginable way. It came out in the early 90ies. Not the 2000s so the comparison is flawed.

@InfiniteSpark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

@jmmv My Windows 10 PC You should throw away your Surface 2.

@bcc2528 That’s Command Prompt, which is extremely different to Windows Terminal. Notepad has been rewritten in 11, which bloated it. And Paint probably too, but I don’t know. Go upgrade to 11 and tell me again.

@jmmv Now try BeOS on it.

@stefan_3d I didn't try BeOS per se, but I did try Haiku -- and I *think* I couldn't get it to install for some reason. Trying again is in my to-do list.

@jmmv @nilsonsfj Yeah, but 600 MHz for a Windows NT 3.5 or NT 6 is blazing fast. When Windows NT was released, the min spec was, I think, a 486 with 33MHz with 4MB of RAM. But if you had a 200MHz computer with 32 Mb of RAM, it is ridiculously faster.

@neverping @nilsonsfj Look further down the thread. I did the same thing with Windows 2000 (a contemporary OS) on that same machine. Same results.

@jmmv Start a game of Civilization 1 on a computer from the era. Then start a game of Civilization 5 on a computer from the modern era. Thus, you will see the true difference of speed and power.

@LillyByteGames If a game can manage graphics so well, the desktop has no excuse not to be even better. It does less (on the screen) than a game.