A similar thing that really opened my eyes: running Windows XP in VirtualBox on a $999 Macbook Air from 2016. It really flies!!! It's fast to boot up and fast

A similar thing that really opened my eyes: running Windows XP in VirtualBox on a $999 Macbook Air from 2016. It really flies!!! It's fast to boot up and fast to use. It's more usable than the host OS !!! It even recognizes some USB devices quite well and has drivers. In 2021, the host OS of my Macbook Air has somehow rotted, even though I installed like 4 programs on it ever, and I barely use it (I use Linux for almost all tasks). Everything is slow, with both jank and "intended" animations. On the other hand, virtualized Windows XP is extremely responsive. It also runs in a tiny amount of RAM -- I think I can set the VirtualBox VM to 256 MB RAM or something (don't quote me on that) This Macbook Air has 8 GB of RAM and it's slow. I think when I got it in 2016, it was decently fast. Somehow in 2021 all the updates made it slow to a crawl. As always iTunes is a big offender. Somehow playing MP3s has to be a chore. I think Spotlight is another offender and that's something that Windows XP didn't have. I use Ubuntu for my Linux desktop, and it has similar problems. There's lag everywhere and it uses a ton of RAM. It's not more usable from a UI perspective. I see a lot of "lateral" progress, although to be fair Ubuntu from 10-15 years ago was pretty bad (definitely less usable than Windows), and they have made progress.