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Comment by sandwichmonger | Hacker News Reader

I use multiple Windows 2000 computers as daily drivers for hobbies, writing documents, internet, et cetera.

It's hilarious to me that I get better performance doing those things on a 20+ year old computer and OS than I used to on a recent computer simply using an internet browser.

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You are not "simply using" an internet browser. You are using an entire (browser) OS in itself on a 4x pixel count display with antialiased text, transparency, blur, scaling, video compositing... The OS itself is using additional compositing for windows using indirect rendering - all the things that add latency. Additionally, you are using a remote application that has it's own latency when talking to the remote server and even locally executing JS is doing everything in a single thread, plus V8 JIT only works for hotspots in the code.

Do any of those additional things add value to the user in this application?

If your taxi driver takes you for a 2 hour scenic tour of the city when you simply wanted a direct 20 minute trip, you don't cut them slack for all the extra work they did, you complain they provided a terrible service.

it'll also be part of a botnet within seconds if you visit a wrong website.

though i also miss the ui-latency of the civilized age ...

Not a problem, I just won't visit anywhere dodgy. Either way, I've got the latest service pack and have been using them for a year or so every day without issue.

probably already is, and doesn't know it.

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