4 ms·

Computers became "fast enough" in the Pentium 4 days for me, which is when I was finally able to properly multitask. I couldn't do much simultaneously on my Pen

by chomp 5y ago

Computers became "fast enough" in the Pentium 4 days for me, which is when I was finally able to properly multitask. I couldn't do much simultaneously on my Pentium 3, as I recall (e.g. couldn't browse the web and listen to mp3s at the same time without occasional distortion). Installing Gentoo took hours. I built a P4 box with 15k RPM Seagate Cheetahs at the time, and on Windows XP, everything loaded near instant. Things feel way more bloated nowadays, though everything still loads near instantly, so I think we're roughly even to what we had once threaded processing came out.

brimble 5y ago
> e.g. couldn't browse the web and listen to mp3s at the same time without occasional distortion This comes from most desktop operating systems being shit at the task of being a desktop operating system. BeOS could do that just fine on a fast-ish Pentium I. Windows and Linux at the time, couldn't do it on hardware twice as powerful (and I don't think either's gotten much better about prioritizing media stability and user input performance)