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Comment by Anarch157a | Hacker News Reader

> Either laptop improvements are well into diminishing returns, or progress in hardware has stagnated, or both.

Sort of. The part about diminishing returns is arguably true, but hardware didn't stagnated.

What happened is that _software_ stopped bloating and inflating like a balloon, as was the norm through the '80s, '90s and early '00s.

When a Microsoft OS requires _less_ resources than it's predecessors (like early Win7 compared to early Vista), you know upgrade cycles will be much longer than before.

Unless you're handling high definition video or playing AAA games, of course. But for any other "mundane" task, the only reason to upgrade from a 5 or 6 years old machine would be an un-repairable hardware malfunction.

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> What happened is that _software_ stopped bloating and inflating like a balloon, as was the norm through the '80s, '90s and early '00s.

Is that true though?

Windows might have gotten more efficient but I think overall most software has gotten worse from a performance perspective. With the prevalence of Electron everywhere, performance doesn't even seem to be a priority anymore. And "native" apps using WPF, etc. aren't as optimized as old school WinForms, MFC style apps (though there are other benefits to be had).

It doesn’t strike me as true either. I was just thinking about how my Intel MacBook came with 1GB in fall 2006 (stock was 512 MB, iirc).

Granted, that wasn’t a professional machine, but I’d say expected memory for a machine has grown 4x in a dozen years.

My first desktop was a Compaq Presario CDS 520, in 1994. It was a 486/66, and came with 4 MB of RAM and a 450MB HDD. I want to say my parents paid $2,400 for it, but would have to double check to be sure.

A dozen years later would be 2006 - if memory serves, a decent laptop in those days would have run you about $1,200-1,500, and would have come with a Core 2 Duo @ ~1.2Ghz, 2GB of RAM, and a ~40GB HDD.

That's a lot more than a 4x increase in specs!

> What happened is that _software_ stopped bloating and inflating like a balloon, as was the norm through the '80s, '90s and early '00s.

I don't think this is true, especially with the growing trend towards web apps being repackaged as desktop applications.

> What happened is that _software_ stopped bloating and inflating like a balloon, as was the norm through the '80s, '90s and early '00s.

And then Electron came out and... well, there went that dream.

Luckily the amount of Electron apps on most people's life is pretty thin.

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