4 ms·

I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. Our internet was a lot slower than as well.

by bluGill 9mo ago

peterfirefly 9mo ago
It crashed a lot more, the fonts (and screens) were uglier, and Javascript was a lot slower. The good thing was that there was very little Javascript.
- szundi 9mo ago
  [dead]
- graemep 9mo ago
  I cannot recall crashes being a problem.
  - II2II 9mo ago
    I remember Netscape Navigator crashing, taking Solaris down with it. I could only imagine what it was like on Windows 9x. I don't want to imagine what Windows 3.x users endured. Windows 3.x was the OS where people saved early and saved often, since the lack of proper memory protection meant that a bad application (or worse, a bad driver) could BSOD the system at any time.
    - ksherlock 9mo ago
      I once did an April Fool's spoof of netscape that displayed a wait cursor for 2 minutes then a bomb alert. For classic Mac, it was 90% accurate with only 1% the disk footprint.
  - tom_ 9mo ago
    With Windows 9x, I recall the crashes being manageable, but it was advisable to give the system 15 minutes to settle down after rebooting. Windows would start multiple things at once on startup and it was a bit risky to overstress it. Windows NT 4 seemed OK, but a lot of software didn't run. By the time of Windows 2000 the tradeoff was much better. (Allowing a settle down time remained a good idea, in my experience. Even if Windows 2000 and later were very unlikely to actually crash, the response time would still be dogshit until everything had been given time to settle into a steady state. This problem didn't get properly fixed until pervasive use of SSDs - some time between Windows 7 and Windows 8, maybe? - and even then the fix was just that there was no longer any pressing need to actually fix it.)
    - devilbunny 9mo ago
      In 1997-8 I met the first person I knew to have a CD-R burner. He dual-booted 98 and NT 4. He joked that NT was his 100+ MB CD burning software. He used 98 for almost everything else, but it couldn't keep that steady stream of data going.
- nxobject 9mo ago
  > The good thing was that there was very little Javascript. Because all of the complicated client side stuff was in Java applets or Shockwave :( Pepperidge Farm remembers having to wait 10 minutes for a GameBoy emulator to load to play Pokémon Yellow on school computers…
Aurornis 9mo ago
> I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. I know it’s a meme on HN to complain that modern websites are slow, but this is a perfect example of how completely distorted views of the past can get. No, browsing the web in the early 90s was slooow. Even simple web pages took a long time to load. As you said, internet connections were very slow too. I remember visiting pages with photos that would come with a warning about the size of the page, at which point I’d get up and go get a drink or take a break while it loaded. Then scrolling pages with images would feel like the computer was working hard. It’s silly to claim that 90s web browsers ran about as fast as they do today.
- exe34 9mo ago
  what a glorious time that was! now it's too easy to get stuck looking at the stream of (usually AI generated) crap. I long for the time when the regular screen break was built-in.
- ok_dad 9mo ago
  No, I think he’s right. I don’t recall the web being any faster today than it was thirty years ago, download speed excepted. The overall experience is about the same, if not worse, IMO.
  - pibaker 9mo ago
    Why would you make an exception for download speed? It was the reason why the internet was slow back then. This is like saying Victorian Britain wasn't polluted, except for all the coal burning.
    - ok_dad 9mo ago
      Cars have much more power today but generally don’t go much faster because they’re much heavier. Just because downloads are faster doesn’t mean the user experience is faster or more snappy. In fact, it might be worse. Quality doesn’t follow from quantity.
- 9mo ago
t-3 9mo ago
I remember using the web in the 90s. I often left to make a sandwich while pages loaded.
rbanffy 9mo ago
Try opening Gmail on one of those. Won’t be fun.

I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. Our internet was a lot slower than as well.

by bluGill 9mo ago

I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. Our internet was a lot slower than as well.

peterfirefly 9mo ago

It crashed a lot more, the fonts (and screens) were uglier, and Javascript was a lot slower. The good thing was that there was very little Javascript.

szundi 9mo ago
[dead]
graemep 9mo ago
I cannot recall crashes being a problem.
- II2II 9mo ago
  I remember Netscape Navigator crashing, taking Solaris down with it. I could only imagine what it was like on Windows 9x. I don't want to imagine what Windows 3.x users endured. Windows 3.x was the OS where people saved early and saved often, since the lack of proper memory protection meant that a bad application (or worse, a bad driver) could BSOD the system at any time.
  - ksherlock 9mo ago
    I once did an April Fool's spoof of netscape that displayed a wait cursor for 2 minutes then a bomb alert. For classic Mac, it was 90% accurate with only 1% the disk footprint.
- tom_ 9mo ago
  With Windows 9x, I recall the crashes being manageable, but it was advisable to give the system 15 minutes to settle down after rebooting. Windows would start multiple things at once on startup and it was a bit risky to overstress it. Windows NT 4 seemed OK, but a lot of software didn't run. By the time of Windows 2000 the tradeoff was much better. (Allowing a settle down time remained a good idea, in my experience. Even if Windows 2000 and later were very unlikely to actually crash, the response time would still be dogshit until everything had been given time to settle into a steady state. This problem didn't get properly fixed until pervasive use of SSDs - some time between Windows 7 and Windows 8, maybe? - and even then the fix was just that there was no longer any pressing need to actually fix it.)
  - devilbunny 9mo ago
    In 1997-8 I met the first person I knew to have a CD-R burner. He dual-booted 98 and NT 4. He joked that NT was his 100+ MB CD burning software. He used 98 for almost everything else, but it couldn't keep that steady stream of data going.
nxobject 9mo ago
> The good thing was that there was very little Javascript. Because all of the complicated client side stuff was in Java applets or Shockwave :( Pepperidge Farm remembers having to wait 10 minutes for a GameBoy emulator to load to play Pokémon Yellow on school computers…

Aurornis 9mo ago

> I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. I know it’s a meme on HN to complain that modern websites are slow, but this is a perfect example of how completely distorted views of the past can get. No, browsing the web in the early 90s was slooow. Even simple web pages took a long time to load. As you said, internet connections were very slow too. I remember visiting pages with photos that would come with a warning about the size of the page, at which point I’d get up and go get a drink or take a break while it loaded. Then scrolling pages with images would feel like the computer was working hard. It’s silly to claim that 90s web browsers ran about as fast as they do today.

exe34 9mo ago
what a glorious time that was! now it's too easy to get stuck looking at the stream of (usually AI generated) crap. I long for the time when the regular screen break was built-in.
ok_dad 9mo ago
No, I think he’s right. I don’t recall the web being any faster today than it was thirty years ago, download speed excepted. The overall experience is about the same, if not worse, IMO.
- pibaker 9mo ago
  Why would you make an exception for download speed? It was the reason why the internet was slow back then. This is like saying Victorian Britain wasn't polluted, except for all the coal burning.
  - ok_dad 9mo ago
    Cars have much more power today but generally don’t go much faster because they’re much heavier. Just because downloads are faster doesn’t mean the user experience is faster or more snappy. In fact, it might be worse. Quality doesn’t follow from quantity.
9mo ago

t-3 9mo ago

I remember using the web in the 90s. I often left to make a sandwich while pages loaded.

rbanffy 9mo ago

Try opening Gmail on one of those. Won’t be fun.