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I think you should go back and rename this "using a pretty modern machine". CD drive, yup all of my computers have them. i-series Intel chip, nope, none of my

I think you should go back and rename this "using a pretty modern machine". CD drive, yup all of my computers have them. i-series Intel chip, nope, none of my boxes have them. I am still on Core-duo/quad technology. I don't really consider my computer _very_ old, and it runs all of my stuff. Granted, I am a sysadmin and do not do a lot of GIMP/ffmpeg... I am in the "cobbler has no shoes" camp, and not really by choice, but to say an i3 is really old or that you use a "very old" machine seems a bit of a stretch. It was not too long ago those came out.

KunafaPizza 4y ago
Just when I thought it was impossible to disagree/raise issue with this article :)
drewzero1 4y ago
The core i series has been around over a decade now, but the last decade has brought relatively little advancement in terms of personal computing. As of a few months ago I've finally switched to a main computer that isn't a Core2 Duo or a PowerPC G4, both of which have been (and still are) mainstays of my personal computing journey for about a decade (once I finally left behind Pentium 4s). Heck, it was only a few years ago I was doing Dual Core Pentium to Core2 Quad CPU upgrades on our production fleet at work. Does time really move that fast?
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Time doesn't move that fast, but software becomes deprecated at double time. You can't rely on anything to exist for more than 5 years these days.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Maybe there should be green revolution in software. Make things efficient again and don't waste time reinventing everything regularly...
n4bz0r 4y ago
Damn, you have two cores! I'm stuck with just one on my merely a decade (and a half?) old netbook. A bit ashamed to admit, but I didn't know better at the time I bought it, and boy does this purchase feel like a scam now :) I've casually tried out probably all the popular performance-oriented Linux distros. Some of them aren't really what they claim to be (Zorin OS Lite, for instance), while some perform fairly well (Debian + LXQT). Windows is surprisingly good in the GUI performance department, too! But all is well only until you open a browser or start updating the system. Then it doesn't matter which OS you are running since it won't really be 'running' anymore. One core simply isn't enough for the modern systems to run well, apparently. Kinda makes me sad that I have to fiddle with the distros and be looking for alternatives for essential software like web-browser as I recall Windows XP running simply great on the thing. I'd really like to know what that is we get these days on the modern systems that hogs the CPU like it does. PS: for those in the same boat, Midori [0] performs considerably better than mainstream browsers while having fairly tidy looks and a few useful features like an ad blocking mechanism and ability to disable scripts and images. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(web_browser)
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  I also fell for the hype - was a big supporter of the OLPC then Asus released their first netbooks EEE range - bought one and it was shit - blamed the mediocre Intel Atom processor and the keyboard was kind of dinky for my paws.
- necovek 4y ago
  Web browsers running heavy applications ("web sites" we used to call them) will simply be slow because of them. Ad-blockers are a must since plenty of ads are javascript-heavy, and you can surely switch to NoScript-approach to disable all JS. Of course, not more than a few tabs running in the background. Pre-emptive multitasking should allow your system to run multiple programs just fine, provided you've got a sufficiently fast core in the first place. My Sony Vaio Z790 from 2009 with Intel Core Duo P9700 runs just fine (though that has an SSD as well): it's dual core score is identical to it's single core score on cpubenchmark.net at around ~1100, while the fastest Atom never reached more than 1000 single-core score until Q2 2021 (with x6211E), and there are still only 5 of Atom CPUs that beat that, and another 4 topping 800 ever. So your netbook likely has a super slow single core with low cache too. At the time of the netbook craze, I've invested in one of the fancy metal HP "business" netbooks on the expensive side (~$500): lovely 10-11" machine, but slow as hell. I quickly sold it away after basically not using it at all. Edit: I just looked it up, and it was HP Mini 2140 with a feisty N270 Atom CPU scoring an entirety of ~170 on cpubenchmark in both single- and multi-core benchmarks.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
I never bought a computer new the last few years except for kids laptops for college for the sake of the warranty - got a used 32GB i7-6700 game PC with a RX580 GPU when we switched to WFH during Covid. My home server/NAS is a refurb Dell. Now freelancing so my current laptop is my daughters old Thinkpad E-450 (also bought as a refurb) - one CTRL keytop is missing and it has a corner crack , just added more memory and a SSD. Got a Xeon E3-1220 board and CPU for free as backup just in case the i7 dies.

KunafaPizza 4y ago

Just when I thought it was impossible to disagree/raise issue with this article :)

drewzero1 4y ago

The core i series has been around over a decade now, but the last decade has brought relatively little advancement in terms of personal computing. As of a few months ago I've finally switched to a main computer that isn't a Core2 Duo or a PowerPC G4, both of which have been (and still are) mainstays of my personal computing journey for about a decade (once I finally left behind Pentium 4s). Heck, it was only a few years ago I was doing Dual Core Pentium to Core2 Quad CPU upgrades on our production fleet at work. Does time really move that fast?

moffkalast 4y ago
Time doesn't move that fast, but software becomes deprecated at double time. You can't rely on anything to exist for more than 5 years these days.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Maybe there should be green revolution in software. Make things efficient again and don't waste time reinventing everything regularly...

n4bz0r 4y ago

Damn, you have two cores! I'm stuck with just one on my merely a decade (and a half?) old netbook. A bit ashamed to admit, but I didn't know better at the time I bought it, and boy does this purchase feel like a scam now :) I've casually tried out probably all the popular performance-oriented Linux distros. Some of them aren't really what they claim to be (Zorin OS Lite, for instance), while some perform fairly well (Debian + LXQT). Windows is surprisingly good in the GUI performance department, too! But all is well only until you open a browser or start updating the system. Then it doesn't matter which OS you are running since it won't really be 'running' anymore. One core simply isn't enough for the modern systems to run well, apparently. Kinda makes me sad that I have to fiddle with the distros and be looking for alternatives for essential software like web-browser as I recall Windows XP running simply great on the thing. I'd really like to know what that is we get these days on the modern systems that hogs the CPU like it does. PS: for those in the same boat, Midori [0] performs considerably better than mainstream browsers while having fairly tidy looks and a few useful features like an ad blocking mechanism and ability to disable scripts and images. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(web_browser)

tibbydudeza 4y ago
I also fell for the hype - was a big supporter of the OLPC then Asus released their first netbooks EEE range - bought one and it was shit - blamed the mediocre Intel Atom processor and the keyboard was kind of dinky for my paws.
necovek 4y ago
Web browsers running heavy applications ("web sites" we used to call them) will simply be slow because of them. Ad-blockers are a must since plenty of ads are javascript-heavy, and you can surely switch to NoScript-approach to disable all JS. Of course, not more than a few tabs running in the background. Pre-emptive multitasking should allow your system to run multiple programs just fine, provided you've got a sufficiently fast core in the first place. My Sony Vaio Z790 from 2009 with Intel Core Duo P9700 runs just fine (though that has an SSD as well): it's dual core score is identical to it's single core score on cpubenchmark.net at around ~1100, while the fastest Atom never reached more than 1000 single-core score until Q2 2021 (with x6211E), and there are still only 5 of Atom CPUs that beat that, and another 4 topping 800 ever. So your netbook likely has a super slow single core with low cache too. At the time of the netbook craze, I've invested in one of the fancy metal HP "business" netbooks on the expensive side (~$500): lovely 10-11" machine, but slow as hell. I quickly sold it away after basically not using it at all. Edit: I just looked it up, and it was HP Mini 2140 with a feisty N270 Atom CPU scoring an entirety of ~170 on cpubenchmark in both single- and multi-core benchmarks.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

I never bought a computer new the last few years except for kids laptops for college for the sake of the warranty - got a used 32GB i7-6700 game PC with a RX580 GPU when we switched to WFH during Covid. My home server/NAS is a refurb Dell. Now freelancing so my current laptop is my daughters old Thinkpad E-450 (also bought as a refurb) - one CTRL keytop is missing and it has a corner crack , just added more memory and a SSD. Got a Xeon E3-1220 board and CPU for free as backup just in case the i7 dies.