A prime example: cookie dialogs. On a slow connection, page loads, large parts are rendered, and you start reading. After that, some script starts to present a cookie dialog, and everything freezes. Page doesn't scroll anymore, buttons don't work, sometimes a previously-readable page is darkened or otherwise obscured so you can't keep reading while this goes on.
Then a whole bunch of stuff is downloading, which (again: "slow connection") takes forever. Like 20s+. Halfway through you see "accept / reject / settings", but none of those buttons respond (except the dark pattern where "accept" often works faster or smoother than either "reject" or "settings". Aaargh!). When things respond again, consider yourself lucky when page re-renders as before.
Which also runs afoul of 1 of my pet peeves with user interfaces: DO NOT PRESENT A UI ELEMENT UNTIL CODE TO PROCESS ITS USE, IS PRESENT IN MEMORY & READY. Really simple right? Yet I see examples ignoring this oooften.
A 'slow' CPU, low RAM/swapping etc just makes this worse. Web developers tend to have fast machines & connectivity so they may not even be aware of this. Or think it's a non-issue even though it affects many users - existing or potential.
Stop building SPA, go back to HTML. Re-assess every third party. For extra performance and scaling, implement cache. Relax and see web experience healing.
Especially when trying to buy something. I much prefer to have a longer initial load and then have everything just work instead of waiting as I navigate between pages, the multi stage checkout, confirmation etc.
But yeah, if I'm just trying read a single article on a blog, preloading everything is pointless. A hybrid site with the initial page being server side rendered + progressive enhancement afterwards is theoretically optimal in my opinion.
Ever submit some giant form to get some random error and then lose the entire state of it? Used to be extremely common, even though it shouldn’t have been.
Use the appropriate technology, everything doesn't have to be a SPA.
If that's a connection-less interaction or something small that stays on the same page, sure it makes sense to keep it in the browser. You don't need to build your whole site as a bloated SPA just for few limited use-cases.
And in London many buildings are declared as historic making it hard to get a permit for any work. The best chance is to wait until old pipes bursts and digging has to be done in any case to put fiber along the pipes.
You'll notice buildings in central London that are listed _but_ have housing association ownership nearly all have fibre to each apartment, as they did portfolio wide deals with hyperoptic etc.
And pipes don't help. Openreach (who owns the copper network) are not allowed in 99% of cases to "fix" copper with fibre under the agreements they have with building owners, they can only make like for like repairs.
The worst affected apartment buildings are 90s and pre 2015ish. Everything after that got fibre installed at build time.
Btw it is worth checking if you have an altnet like hyperoptic, community fibre or g network available. The majority do and if you are just checking for openreach or VM broadband it won't show up.
It will certainly help to download the bloat faster, but you've still got to do all the hydration as OP put it.
Based on my experiences with windows 11, that laptop seems like it will be quite a bit worse than the one I was using, even though mine probably has a much worse cpu.
> 【Graphics】 Intel Graphics
And this is why you don't buy laptops from Amazon. At best, the seller has no idea what they're doing, at worst, this is fraud.