3 ms·

FWIW i do not remember having issues like that, i had mIRC practically always open, a web browser, email application, etc and i do not remember ever having netw

FWIW i do not remember having issues like that, i had mIRC practically always open, a web browser, email application, etc and i do not remember ever having networking issues. Internet was slow but that was largely because for the most part of the 90s i was stuck with a very slow 2400 baud modem - i got to appreciate the option that browsers had to not download images by default :-P. But in general i do not remember being unable to run multiple programs at the same time, even when i was using Windows 3.1 (though with Win3.1 things were a bit more unstable mainly due to the cooperative multitasking).

cambalache 6y ago
Me neither, I'm not going to lie and say that I had 40 applications opened, but I DID have 5-10 apps using the web with 0 issues (A browser+IRC App + Email Client+MICQ+MSN Messenger+Kazaam/Napster+Winamp in stream mode). Very very few of the web and desktop applications of today are as snappy and user-friendly as classic Winamp.
- worthless-trash 6y ago
  It really whipped the llamas ass.
  - millzlane 6y ago
    It still does! https://www.winamp.com/ https://www.winamp.com/
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  And yet, people stopped using it. I used to use it all the time. Now I use Spotify instead. I'm not sure I want to go back to curating my own collection of mp3's again.
  - GauntletWizard 6y ago
    In a better world, you really wouldn't need to. Winamp was great - The weak point was always the playlist editor, but winamp's interface for simply playing music and seeing what was up next was wonderful. Spotify could provide you with a playlist plugin that simply gave a list of URLs, or let you download one that lasted X hours.
  - dep_b 6y ago
    Mobile phones happened. Tiny memories while always being connected.
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    Sure, but if you could have Spotify as is, or a light weight player, like WinAMP, both with equal access to the Spotify service, which would you pick? People aren't using Spotify because the player is fantastic, they use it because Spotify has a huge library, is reasonable price and the player is sort of okay.
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      Totally agree. But the DRM monster rears its head. Everyone is afraid you'll steal their choons if you're allowed to play them on whatever player you like sigh
      - fxtentacle 6y ago
        Still, all iTunes content can be de-DRM-ed in 500 lines of C code, so it's not like "the industry" actually requires it to be secure. Like everything these days, it's barely good enough. And why bother implementing your DRM as a 1KB C++ library when you can use a 5MB Objective C framework instead?
  - bonaldi 6y ago
    Spotify is a case in point: it used to have a fantastic, small and fast native desktop app. It replaced it with the bloated web-based one we see today.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    That's an artifact of IP laws. The reason you don't have to curate your own mp3s again is because some service managed to find a way to give you a searchable, streamable collection of music that's also legal. But that in no way implies Spotify needs to be so bloated.
- jotm 6y ago
  I still use Winamp for offline music. Nothing else is faster.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    Try AIMP 3. It's amazing and is an improvement over Winamp.
  - minkiu 6y ago
    I did use foobar2000 for a while and it was quite snappy.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Same here. About the only time when by browser + mIRC + WinAMP + IM + Visual C++ 6.0 combo slowed down was when the VC++ was compiling the game I was working on. I would then close the IM, because doing so would speed up the compile times by 1.5x.
- tuananh 6y ago
  > Very very few of the web and desktop applications of today are as snappy and user-friendly as classic Winamp. foobar2000?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Decade 6y ago
IRC, SMTP, IMAP are protocols from back when desktop operating systems didn’t even come with TCP/IP. They would use a single connection for unlimited messages. I was using a “modern” chat program, AOL Instant Messenger. Alright, the missing part of my story was that I was also using a proxy program to share a single connection with my brothers. NAT wasn’t widely available yet, and Winmodems were much easier to find than hardware modems. (And I hadn’t discovered Linux and the free Unixes yet.) So, every TCP connection that AIM made was 2 connections in the proxy program. We quickly discovered that AIM on more than one computer at a time made the entire Internet unusable. Every generation of developers decries the next generation for bloat, but Windows 95 had preemptive multitasking that made the computer so much snappier (plus other features), at the cost of multiple times more RAM needed than Windows 3.1. (16 MB was the unofficial minimum, and often painfully small. Microsoft’s official minimum was impractical back then.) Windows XP had protected memory that made it more feasible to run multiple applications, because they were much less likely to crash each other (plus other features, including a TCP/IP stack featuring NAT and a useful connection limit), at another several multiples more RAM needed. There have always been tradeoffs. Back in the day, programs were small and developers focused more on making sure they did not crash, because they didn’t have lots of RAM and crashing would often require the computer to reboot. That developer focus meant less focus on delivering features to users. (Also, security has often meant bloat.) Now, you barely need to know anything about computer science, and you can deliver applications to users, at the cost of ginormous runtime requirements.

cambalache 6y ago

Me neither, I'm not going to lie and say that I had 40 applications opened, but I DID have 5-10 apps using the web with 0 issues (A browser+IRC App + Email Client+MICQ+MSN Messenger+Kazaam/Napster+Winamp in stream mode). Very very few of the web and desktop applications of today are as snappy and user-friendly as classic Winamp.

worthless-trash 6y ago
It really whipped the llamas ass.
- millzlane 6y ago
  It still does! https://www.winamp.com/ https://www.winamp.com/
marcus_holmes 6y ago
And yet, people stopped using it. I used to use it all the time. Now I use Spotify instead. I'm not sure I want to go back to curating my own collection of mp3's again.
- GauntletWizard 6y ago
  In a better world, you really wouldn't need to. Winamp was great - The weak point was always the playlist editor, but winamp's interface for simply playing music and seeing what was up next was wonderful. Spotify could provide you with a playlist plugin that simply gave a list of URLs, or let you download one that lasted X hours.
- dep_b 6y ago
  Mobile phones happened. Tiny memories while always being connected.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  Sure, but if you could have Spotify as is, or a light weight player, like WinAMP, both with equal access to the Spotify service, which would you pick? People aren't using Spotify because the player is fantastic, they use it because Spotify has a huge library, is reasonable price and the player is sort of okay.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    Totally agree. But the DRM monster rears its head. Everyone is afraid you'll steal their choons if you're allowed to play them on whatever player you like sigh
    - fxtentacle 6y ago
      Still, all iTunes content can be de-DRM-ed in 500 lines of C code, so it's not like "the industry" actually requires it to be secure. Like everything these days, it's barely good enough. And why bother implementing your DRM as a 1KB C++ library when you can use a 5MB Objective C framework instead?
- bonaldi 6y ago
  Spotify is a case in point: it used to have a fantastic, small and fast native desktop app. It replaced it with the bloated web-based one we see today.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  That's an artifact of IP laws. The reason you don't have to curate your own mp3s again is because some service managed to find a way to give you a searchable, streamable collection of music that's also legal. But that in no way implies Spotify needs to be so bloated.
jotm 6y ago
I still use Winamp for offline music. Nothing else is faster.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  Try AIMP 3. It's amazing and is an improvement over Winamp.
- minkiu 6y ago
  I did use foobar2000 for a while and it was quite snappy.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Same here. About the only time when by browser + mIRC + WinAMP + IM + Visual C++ 6.0 combo slowed down was when the VC++ was compiling the game I was working on. I would then close the IM, because doing so would speed up the compile times by 1.5x.
tuananh 6y ago
> Very very few of the web and desktop applications of today are as snappy and user-friendly as classic Winamp. foobar2000?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Decade 6y ago

IRC, SMTP, IMAP are protocols from back when desktop operating systems didn’t even come with TCP/IP. They would use a single connection for unlimited messages. I was using a “modern” chat program, AOL Instant Messenger. Alright, the missing part of my story was that I was also using a proxy program to share a single connection with my brothers. NAT wasn’t widely available yet, and Winmodems were much easier to find than hardware modems. (And I hadn’t discovered Linux and the free Unixes yet.) So, every TCP connection that AIM made was 2 connections in the proxy program. We quickly discovered that AIM on more than one computer at a time made the entire Internet unusable. Every generation of developers decries the next generation for bloat, but Windows 95 had preemptive multitasking that made the computer so much snappier (plus other features), at the cost of multiple times more RAM needed than Windows 3.1. (16 MB was the unofficial minimum, and often painfully small. Microsoft’s official minimum was impractical back then.) Windows XP had protected memory that made it more feasible to run multiple applications, because they were much less likely to crash each other (plus other features, including a TCP/IP stack featuring NAT and a useful connection limit), at another several multiples more RAM needed. There have always been tradeoffs. Back in the day, programs were small and developers focused more on making sure they did not crash, because they didn’t have lots of RAM and crashing would often require the computer to reboot. That developer focus meant less focus on delivering features to users. (Also, security has often meant bloat.) Now, you barely need to know anything about computer science, and you can deliver applications to users, at the cost of ginormous runtime requirements.