
Going Nowhere Really Fast, or How Computers Only Come in Two Speeds. - mbateman
http://www.loper-os.org/?p=300
======
StavrosK
In my experience, this is 100% spot on. Hell, while typing this comment the
caret is catching up to my keystrokes. Why can't we get interfaces right? We
have all this processing speed available and yet our computers are slow. I
press the shortcut to open a new filemanager window and it takes a second, why
can't it take a few ms? My window manager is already loaded, what takes so
long!

Like it or not, this is the primary reason that the iPhone is so popular. It
is the first _fast_ smartphone. All the other phones I had tried before the
iPhone came out were just frustratingly slow. Hopefully, with the competition,
other phone manufacturers have started to fix this (I'll get my first Android
phone soon, I hope it's a fast one).

~~~
houseabsolute
> Why can't we get interfaces right? We have all this processing speed
> available and yet our computers are slow.

My computer is not slow. I rarely see issues like a cursor that is delayed
with respect to my typing. What kind of device do you have? Have you actually
tried doing any performance analysis to see why it is slow? Did you buy your
computer based on it not being slow, or, to put it another way, give an
economic incentive to the outcome you want? (Clearly not, based on your post.)
Or was there something else you opted to prioritize over that quickness you
say you want so much?

~~~
Groxx
I've had cursor-delay happen on _every_ OS I've tried, in nearly _every_
application, unless I was using Vim / the CLI. Except for Windows' CLI - that
gets more worthless the more I use it, and is significantly slower than many
other Windows tools.

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, what's up with that? NetBeans is great in theory, but I type half a word
and have to wait for a second for it to show me completions I don't even
want... I've switched to vim completely now, not for any conscious reason, but
just for the fact that I found running it to quickly edit a file and then
staying there for hours.

------
jseliger
As I posted in his comments section:

<em>And could exist again.</em>

I hope it does.

Still, this reminds me of Joel Spolsky's <a
href="[http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html>Bl...](http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html>Bloatware)
and the 80/20 myth</a>. The reason this computer doesn't exist is because
people don't want it—or, to be more precise, they don't want to make the
trade-offs it implies in sufficient numbers for there to be a market for such
a computer.

Nothing is stopping someone from making a stripped-down version of, say, Linux
that will boot "into a graphical everything-visible-and-modifiable programming
environment, the most expressive ever created faster than the latter boots
into its syrupy imponade hell." But most people evidently prefer the features
that modern OSes and programs offer. Or, rather, they prefer that modern OSes
support THEIR pet feature and make everything as easy to accomplish as
possible at the expense of some speed.

~~~
Retric
The problem with bloatware is not how much HDD it costs, but how much it slows
things down. Let's say MS sold a copy of windows that wasted 60 fewer seconds
of each day. For the average developer that adds up to far more than the cost
of windows over the lifetime of the computer.

PS: Using a SSD on a high end machine with plenty of RAM simulates what a low
bloat system could provide. It might cost more, but it really does pay for
it's self fairly quickly.

------
yummyfajitas
What year is this guy living in?

I can't remember the last time I noticed my UI hanging. Maybe once or twice
when I had a macbook, but certainly not in the past year.

~~~
asciilifeform
Load MS-Word or Powerpoint with a modestly-graphical document and get back to
us.

Or hell, GMail. Or a similar Web 2.0 lagware abortion.

~~~
machrider
If you think Office is slow, try something from Adobe.

------
richmassena23
It feels like the article merely repeats some of what I read in the Unix
haters handbook years ago.

LISP machines were extraordinarily expensive for a single-user machine, much
of which was due to the heavyweight hardware (like 32-bit processors, 32MB of
RAM and fast high-capacity disks in the 1980s).

If I recall correctly, your basic Symbolics LISP machine, with software, cost
about $50,000 in 1986. According to an online inflation calculator, that's
$96,500 in today's money. I can guarantee that the resulting 64-core 128GB
machine with 1TB of SSDs in RAID-10 configuration would beat the pants off of
the Symbolics workstation, use less power and make much less noise and you'd
have money left over.

All that said, interface responsiveness is part of the user experience. If
your application/OS/device crosses that threshold were the user has to wait,
it's a failure. People only stick with Word for Windows (surely the unnamed
word processor referenced) because they don't know better or have a choice.

~~~
asciilifeform
_> I can guarantee that the resulting 64-core 128GB machine with 1TB of SSDs
in RAID-10 configuration would beat the pants off of the Symbolics
workstation_

Running MS junk, web 2.0 crapware, or open-source masterpieces of infinite
bloat such as Firefox? Don't be so sure.

------
jsz0
This is exactly why I'll never buy another computer without an SSD. No other
upgrade I've done in the last 10 years has benefited the overall feeling of
responsiveness as much. I'd be very interested in seeing a blind taste test of
an an Atom + SSD vs. i7 + 7200RPM HD. I bet most would pick the Atom as the
faster machine for most common tasks.

------
cubicle67
I remember building an 700MHz (I think) pc, setting it up with Win98SE and
Office 97 and commenting to someone that I didn't see how anyone could want
for much faster processor speeds; boy, did it have teh snappy.

Seems I was wrong...

------
mithaler
Um, the machine I'm using now cost about $400 and doesn't have an SSD, runs
Ubuntu with programming IDEs, OpenOffice and WinXP virtual instances for IE
testing and Flash and Gmail open constantly and it almost _never_ hangs or
feels unresponsive unless a program is misbehaving, which is rare and easy to
detect and fix.

I'm really curious about his setup. If it's Windows, I've been able to make
long-used Windows machines feel much snappier by trimming cruft annually or
so. One of the reasons I love Ubuntu so much is that I _don't_ have to do
that.

------
eogas
This in no way rings true with my experience of modern computers. I think most
people will agree, unless you are blatantly taxing a machine beyond what it
was ever meant to handle (running 17 instances of Visual Studio at once, _and_
trying to edit a Word document perhaps), even an entry level machine should
run relatively smoothly.

~~~
asciilifeform
Evidently, a single instance of MS Powerpoint is too much for my 3GHz XP box -
the equivalent of a dozen or more Cray-II's.

Dredge up an MS-DOS box running WordPerfect and remember what an actually
responsive computer feels like. Seriously, do it. Then tell me your modern PC
is "smooth."

------
julius_geezer
As the sometime user of an Underwood manual typewriter, I have to say that I
haven't hit cursor lag on a word processor since the days of WordPerfect 6.0,
fourteen years ago. I should add that my typing speed was never really
challenging the Underwoods, either, though.

------
sry_not4sale
Love this blog!

If only there was more constructive criticism of the broken mess that is
desktop OSs...

------
jodrellblank
I'm very suspicious of the LISP-Machine nostalgia. I bet once it had grown up
to support TCP/IP and firewalls and FireFox and Skype and 3D cards with weird
drivers and Win32 compatibility and antivirus software and multiple users with
loads of ACL systems and Adobe Reader and Flash and so on, it wouldn't be half
as wonderous.

~~~
asciilifeform
Funny how you mention 3D cards and the Web - both were extensively prototyped
on Lisp Machines. As was just about everything even vaguely worth using in
modern computing.

As for "Win32 compatibility, antivirus software, Adobe Reader and Flash" -
let's bolt oxcart compatibility onto your car and see how well it handles on
the freeway.

~~~
jodrellblank
_As for "Win32 compatibility, antivirus software, Adobe Reader and Flash" -
let's bolt oxcart compatibility onto your car and see how well it handles on
the freeway._

So... you agree?

------
jodrellblank
I was skimming through Peter Cochrane's 108 Tips for Time Travellers, a book
from 1997/1998 this week. In it, he complains that his computing power has
gone from 4Mhz to 40Mhz and word processors have slowed even then, and in
future we'll need supercomputers to write letters.

