<story><title>Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)</title><url>https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642615296</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jfengel</author><text>What version of 1983 did he live through?&lt;p&gt;My Osborne 1 took a minute to load Wordstar. Searching a document would take more minutes if it was longer than about 30k because it had to swap to floppy disk. Connecting to a BBS was time for a bathroom break. So were compiles.&lt;p&gt;I think most of what is perceptually slower for the author is that it&amp;#x27;s a small percentage of the 40 years it took to get here. I loved my O1 but it did what little it could do very slowly. My phone in my hands right now is doing a trillion more things better and faster.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smoe</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t read the article and only started using computers as a kid in the early 90s.&lt;p&gt;My take on perceptually slower is:&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t remember computers being slow back then. They were just like they were.&lt;p&gt;Whereas today, especially since I&amp;#x27;m living in Latin America on flaky and slow mobile internet connection and low to mid-range phones, the range of speed of just taking into account websites is massive. From super snappy to barely usable. Which makes me much more conscious about it.&lt;p&gt;Maybe it is just selective memory, and the difference in my age, but I feel back then, how something will perform was more predictable and consistant from a user perspective.</text></comment>
<story><title>Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)</title><url>https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642615296</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jfengel</author><text>What version of 1983 did he live through?&lt;p&gt;My Osborne 1 took a minute to load Wordstar. Searching a document would take more minutes if it was longer than about 30k because it had to swap to floppy disk. Connecting to a BBS was time for a bathroom break. So were compiles.&lt;p&gt;I think most of what is perceptually slower for the author is that it&amp;#x27;s a small percentage of the 40 years it took to get here. I loved my O1 but it did what little it could do very slowly. My phone in my hands right now is doing a trillion more things better and faster.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>drchopchop</author><text>Clearly this person never tried to load a program on a C64 with a tape drive. I could make myself lunch and the thing still wouldn&amp;#x27;t be done, and there was a non-zero chance it would screw up somehow and you&amp;#x27;d have to rewind the tape and start it over. Upgrading to floppy wasn&amp;#x27;t much better, either, before the advent of fast load cartridges.&lt;p&gt;Contrast that with my current Win 10 install, which on a 3-year old computer goes from &amp;quot;off&amp;quot; to login screen in under 10 seconds.</text></comment>