5 ms·

Yes, you really need "dollars per amount of RAM you need for standard computing tasks." Windows 11 requires a bare minimum of 4 GB of RAM, Window 10 only needed

Yes, you really need "dollars per amount of RAM you need for standard computing tasks." Windows 11 requires a bare minimum of 4 GB of RAM, Window 10 only needed 1 GB.

ElFitz 3mo ago
I still don't get where all that memory goes.
- microgpt 3mo ago
  Abstractions on abstractions on abstractions; background tasks and their abstraction stacks; increased cache and buffer sizes to take advantage of increased typical memory capacity. For an example of the latter, handling TCP on a Commodore 64 is a problem because the memory can only fit about 45 packets with nothing left over, but now you can just allocate a megabyte receive buffer per connection.
- xeromal 3mo ago
  For windows 11, it seesms to be antivirus scanning. That's what's always blowing up my RAM
- skywhopper 3mo ago
  Neither do the developers, because until recently, RAM was so cheap it didn’t matter, and we were in a situation where almost no one ever needed to consider “how much RAM will this take?” when writing code.
  - cryptonym 3mo ago
    More than code they write, the framework and runtime they use.
  - crottypeter 3mo ago
    Like Homer Simpson said about alcohol: "To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems", we developers can say about AI (assuming AI-assisted coding can save memory in popular programs, OSes, etc)
- cryptonym 3mo ago
  Mostly used by JavaScript parsers and HTML rendering, the rest is for telemetry.
noosphr 3mo ago
That's just as wrong in the opposite direction, y2k was a thing because two bytes were worth the saving in 1980, and we really needed those two bytes.
- microgpt 3mo ago
  [dead]
- Dylan16807 3mo ago
  Well it's complicated. Y2K was a combination of logic issues and the consequences of certain inefficient ways to store dates, like text and BCD. Migrating to binary could fit plenty of dates into the same space or even less. In particular, 16 bits is enough to store the entire date, year month day, from 1900 into mid 2079. Any date format that couldn't go past 1999 was probably using 24-48 bits.
fc417fc802 3mo ago
If what you're interested in is fluctuations in production versus demand then you absolutely do not want a subjective metric. Measures of the form dollars per unit, units per watt, units per flop, etc are what you're interested in.
- __patchbit__ 3mo ago
  Discussion of memory in terms of words and their bit length, time to complete a task is more meaningful to intent on use and compaction, see greycode technique. Dollars of slop a unit sacrifice skills in the industrial base for the gain of paper profits at the repeating business meetings.
ryukoposting 3mo ago
Have you ever actually tried using Windows 10 with 1GB of RAM? I wouldn't consider it suitable for "standard computing tasks." And that's the hangup, what do you consider a "standard computing task?" On what OS? Running what software? How well? Plenty of people were still using XP in 2009, so is 256 MB of RAM okay for "standard computing tasks" in 2009?
- gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
  > Have you ever actually tried using Windows 10 with 1GB of RAM? I wouldn't consider it suitable for "standard computing tasks." I have [0], and it's actually not quite as bad as you would expect. It certainly wasn't fast, but I had no problem using it for basic web browsing and document editing. The painfully slow hard drive and processor speeds on that computer actually caused more issues than the lack of RAM. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45743066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45743066
  - ryukoposting 3mo ago
    I remember installing Windows 10 on my laptop when I was in high school, it was a decommissioned Thinkpad T410s from my dad's work. 4GB of RAM, Nehalem i5, a very early consumer SSD (OCZ, if I recall). I vividly remember my first thought being "wow this is really slow." Win7 ran like a champ on that machine. My experience with Win10 on that laptop actually led me to buy a dumb gamer laptop for college. As those all do, it died prematurely, so I ended up back on the T410s for a while. I put KDE Neon on it. It was great! If you're saying that you can install and use Win10 on a laptop with 1 GB of RAM, well yes I acknowledge that is true. But it's a purely academic exercise, it's not actually a usable computer for the overwhelming majority of people. Maybe it would have been fine for my grandma. She was using a Pentium II running Windows XP to go on Facebook in the early 2010s.
aaron695 3mo ago
[dead]

Yes, you really need "dollars per amount of RAM you need for standard computing tasks." Windows 11 requires a bare minimum of 4 GB of RAM, Window 10 only needed 1 GB.

ElFitz 3mo ago

I still don't get where all that memory goes.

microgpt 3mo ago
Abstractions on abstractions on abstractions; background tasks and their abstraction stacks; increased cache and buffer sizes to take advantage of increased typical memory capacity. For an example of the latter, handling TCP on a Commodore 64 is a problem because the memory can only fit about 45 packets with nothing left over, but now you can just allocate a megabyte receive buffer per connection.
xeromal 3mo ago
For windows 11, it seesms to be antivirus scanning. That's what's always blowing up my RAM
skywhopper 3mo ago
Neither do the developers, because until recently, RAM was so cheap it didn’t matter, and we were in a situation where almost no one ever needed to consider “how much RAM will this take?” when writing code.
- cryptonym 3mo ago
  More than code they write, the framework and runtime they use.
- crottypeter 3mo ago
  Like Homer Simpson said about alcohol: "To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems", we developers can say about AI (assuming AI-assisted coding can save memory in popular programs, OSes, etc)
cryptonym 3mo ago
Mostly used by JavaScript parsers and HTML rendering, the rest is for telemetry.

noosphr 3mo ago

That's just as wrong in the opposite direction, y2k was a thing because two bytes were worth the saving in 1980, and we really needed those two bytes.

microgpt 3mo ago
[dead]
Dylan16807 3mo ago
Well it's complicated. Y2K was a combination of logic issues and the consequences of certain inefficient ways to store dates, like text and BCD. Migrating to binary could fit plenty of dates into the same space or even less. In particular, 16 bits is enough to store the entire date, year month day, from 1900 into mid 2079. Any date format that couldn't go past 1999 was probably using 24-48 bits.

fc417fc802 3mo ago

If what you're interested in is fluctuations in production versus demand then you absolutely do not want a subjective metric. Measures of the form dollars per unit, units per watt, units per flop, etc are what you're interested in.

__patchbit__ 3mo ago
Discussion of memory in terms of words and their bit length, time to complete a task is more meaningful to intent on use and compaction, see greycode technique. Dollars of slop a unit sacrifice skills in the industrial base for the gain of paper profits at the repeating business meetings.

ryukoposting 3mo ago

Have you ever actually tried using Windows 10 with 1GB of RAM? I wouldn't consider it suitable for "standard computing tasks." And that's the hangup, what do you consider a "standard computing task?" On what OS? Running what software? How well? Plenty of people were still using XP in 2009, so is 256 MB of RAM okay for "standard computing tasks" in 2009?

gucci-on-fleek 3mo ago
> Have you ever actually tried using Windows 10 with 1GB of RAM? I wouldn't consider it suitable for "standard computing tasks." I have [0], and it's actually not quite as bad as you would expect. It certainly wasn't fast, but I had no problem using it for basic web browsing and document editing. The painfully slow hard drive and processor speeds on that computer actually caused more issues than the lack of RAM. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45743066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45743066
- ryukoposting 3mo ago
  I remember installing Windows 10 on my laptop when I was in high school, it was a decommissioned Thinkpad T410s from my dad's work. 4GB of RAM, Nehalem i5, a very early consumer SSD (OCZ, if I recall). I vividly remember my first thought being "wow this is really slow." Win7 ran like a champ on that machine. My experience with Win10 on that laptop actually led me to buy a dumb gamer laptop for college. As those all do, it died prematurely, so I ended up back on the T410s for a while. I put KDE Neon on it. It was great! If you're saying that you can install and use Win10 on a laptop with 1 GB of RAM, well yes I acknowledge that is true. But it's a purely academic exercise, it's not actually a usable computer for the overwhelming majority of people. Maybe it would have been fine for my grandma. She was using a Pentium II running Windows XP to go on Facebook in the early 2010s.

aaron695 3mo ago

[dead]