4 ms·

Not having a windows machine here to test this, I can't believe some of the results there. Specifically the "Win32 applications" ones. 7 seconds to open the fil

Not having a windows machine here to test this, I can't believe some of the results there. Specifically the "Win32 applications" ones. 7 seconds to open the file manager or text editor? Or MS Paint?! On my laptop here I can load gimp including plugins within ~1.5-2s, and I never even bothered to optimize anything about this. I wouldn't even be able to measure the opening time of e.g. gedit without some sort of scripting. Are win32 apps really this slow to start up, or are the 7s "baseline" measurements in that experiment some cumulative value over all the applications?

tallanvor 5y ago
The benchmarks are hard to compare. He's using a VM and a fairly small amount of RAM (I don't know of many PCs only shipping with 4GB RAM these days). I can say that Word takes about 2 seconds to open on my system, but I'm not running in a VM and I have 48GB RAM, so Windows can cache a lot to optimize opening times.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  4GB is actually pretty common for "budget" laptops in india. Check out Amazon.in and search for laptops. Anything above 40,000 inr is in the higher than budget, cheap range. For the past few years, there has been a trend of buying refurbished devices. Laptops and desktops. I bought a Dell e7440 with I7 5th gen I think and 4GB RAM. For 22,000 bucks. I had to upgrade to 8 gigs myself but 4 is pretty standard here. Oh, and the "gaming" and productivity series of brands are usually upwards of 80,000 inr which is exortbitantly high for majority of Indians. Just for some context, interns are paid 6-7000 bucks a month and a day labourer, unskilled earns a Max 700 bucks a day. So, a day labourer had to buy a cheap laptop for 30,000 bucks, have to work for 42 days. Oh, and you have the last year rush for buying cheap devices for online classes, with people have 2-3 kids, buying a laptop for 50,000 times 3 is out of the question. Again for context, cars in india start from 290,000 a maruti alto . https://www.zigwheels.com/newcars/cars-under-5-lakhs https://www.zigwheels.com/newcars/cars-under-5-lakhs apple devices are rich mans luxury products here .
  - embeddTrway690 5y ago
    Yeah. That's one reason I use linux. I am a student and I have this 4GB laptop I brought for less than INR 30,000, and linux is still super responsive on this. Windows lags for 5 seconds before pressing Windows key and search results showing up.
    - lonesword 5y ago
      I used to have a cheap machine with 4GB of RAM and an HDD. When I got some money, I went for an SSD instead of buying more RAM. The difference was significant. I happily worked on that laptop (with 4GB) for another 6 months (thanks to the SSD for making it bearable) before upgrading RAM. When in doubt, buy more SSD, not RAM :)
  - aitchnyu 5y ago
    Lots of Indian laptops come with HDDs. Even my office laptop, after 2 promotions. When I got an SSD a few years back, I realised random failures in dev tools were not normal, there were lots of bottlenecks.
  - lloydatkinson 5y ago
    4GB is just criminal these days - running a few modern and/or memory intensive apps like Chrome on Windows in 2021 is just a dreadful experience. I can't believe that over two decades after x64/64 bit was introduced that manufacturers still think it's 2001 and "4GB is just enough to qualify getting past the 4GB 32 bit limit"...
  - signal11 5y ago
    Apart from purchasing power, laptops in India are expensive because of high levels of tax (28% GST I think, which would be higher than what Sweden charges). I'm not sure if import duties apply on top of this as well. The reality is that any laptop with 4GB RAM and a 5400rpm hard drive and running a modern OS won't give a great user experience. ChromeOS on Chromebooks could be an exception, but even cheap Chromebooks have small EMM/eMMC cards instead of 5400rpm drives. If you have such a system, a lightweight distro such as Lubuntu will probably give you a much better time. For Windows 10, 8GB RAM + any SSD seems to be the minimum usable configuration.

tallanvor 5y ago

The benchmarks are hard to compare. He's using a VM and a fairly small amount of RAM (I don't know of many PCs only shipping with 4GB RAM these days). I can say that Word takes about 2 seconds to open on my system, but I'm not running in a VM and I have 48GB RAM, so Windows can cache a lot to optimize opening times.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago
4GB is actually pretty common for "budget" laptops in india. Check out Amazon.in and search for laptops. Anything above 40,000 inr is in the higher than budget, cheap range. For the past few years, there has been a trend of buying refurbished devices. Laptops and desktops. I bought a Dell e7440 with I7 5th gen I think and 4GB RAM. For 22,000 bucks. I had to upgrade to 8 gigs myself but 4 is pretty standard here. Oh, and the "gaming" and productivity series of brands are usually upwards of 80,000 inr which is exortbitantly high for majority of Indians. Just for some context, interns are paid 6-7000 bucks a month and a day labourer, unskilled earns a Max 700 bucks a day. So, a day labourer had to buy a cheap laptop for 30,000 bucks, have to work for 42 days. Oh, and you have the last year rush for buying cheap devices for online classes, with people have 2-3 kids, buying a laptop for 50,000 times 3 is out of the question. Again for context, cars in india start from 290,000 a maruti alto . https://www.zigwheels.com/newcars/cars-under-5-lakhs https://www.zigwheels.com/newcars/cars-under-5-lakhs apple devices are rich mans luxury products here .
- embeddTrway690 5y ago
  Yeah. That's one reason I use linux. I am a student and I have this 4GB laptop I brought for less than INR 30,000, and linux is still super responsive on this. Windows lags for 5 seconds before pressing Windows key and search results showing up.
  - lonesword 5y ago
    I used to have a cheap machine with 4GB of RAM and an HDD. When I got some money, I went for an SSD instead of buying more RAM. The difference was significant. I happily worked on that laptop (with 4GB) for another 6 months (thanks to the SSD for making it bearable) before upgrading RAM. When in doubt, buy more SSD, not RAM :)
- aitchnyu 5y ago
  Lots of Indian laptops come with HDDs. Even my office laptop, after 2 promotions. When I got an SSD a few years back, I realised random failures in dev tools were not normal, there were lots of bottlenecks.
- lloydatkinson 5y ago
  4GB is just criminal these days - running a few modern and/or memory intensive apps like Chrome on Windows in 2021 is just a dreadful experience. I can't believe that over two decades after x64/64 bit was introduced that manufacturers still think it's 2001 and "4GB is just enough to qualify getting past the 4GB 32 bit limit"...
- signal11 5y ago
  Apart from purchasing power, laptops in India are expensive because of high levels of tax (28% GST I think, which would be higher than what Sweden charges). I'm not sure if import duties apply on top of this as well. The reality is that any laptop with 4GB RAM and a 5400rpm hard drive and running a modern OS won't give a great user experience. ChromeOS on Chromebooks could be an exception, but even cheap Chromebooks have small EMM/eMMC cards instead of 5400rpm drives. If you have such a system, a lightweight distro such as Lubuntu will probably give you a much better time. For Windows 10, 8GB RAM + any SSD seems to be the minimum usable configuration.