nice read. one of these blog posts that you hardly read these days (unagitated, reporting an experience).
I woudn’t consider myself to be a minimalist with regards to software resource usage, but lately I started to wonder a bit about it. The reason is I noticed that my phone (Android) loses all of its sluggishness in its UI when I am in the energy saving mode below 15%. What difference a reduction in animation can make! Obviously I could manually enable that mode, but I fear it will deprioritize background tasks such as messenger apps. Nevertheless, I looked for an option to configure the animation and couldn’t find it. This got me thinking.
Looking back, my Windows 95 PC (Pention II 266 MHz) ran a graphical user interface with just 32 GB RAM. Of course most applications on it were written in plain C and C++, with a Windows API that was taylored to optimizing performance in application code. Nevertheless it seems excessive that my 16 GB macbook swaps occasionally without me doing much fancy stuff.
“Looking back, my Windows 95 PC (Pention II 266 MHz) ran a graphical user interface with just 32 GB RAM.”
I think you meant 32MB of RAM. Otherwise, you were spending way too much on RAM and NUMA hardware for a CPU with max of 3.5GB addressable memory per Windows box.
This is one reason I use alternative ROMs on my phone. The level of customization is insane, including disabling animations. I’m so spoiled by it, I can’t stand manufacturer ROMs or even vanilla AOSP.
FWIW, there’s a setting in Android’s developer settings called “animation scale” that scales the duration of (some) animations. Why something like this isn’t an ordinarily available setting like Apple’s “reduced motion” mode I don’t know.
True. An old friend of mine got in contact recently to ask me for an advice regarding computer he intends to buy. After ~20 years he feels it is time to give up on his Pentium III. I am still astonished.
I gave up on a PIII 600 (128MB RAM) in 2007 - it served me over a decade as my daily driver and the only thing that ever broke in it was the power supply. Wish I could tell the same on recent hardware.
nice read. one of these blog posts that you hardly read these days (unagitated, reporting an experience).
I woudn’t consider myself to be a minimalist with regards to software resource usage, but lately I started to wonder a bit about it. The reason is I noticed that my phone (Android) loses all of its sluggishness in its UI when I am in the energy saving mode below 15%. What difference a reduction in animation can make! Obviously I could manually enable that mode, but I fear it will deprioritize background tasks such as messenger apps. Nevertheless, I looked for an option to configure the animation and couldn’t find it. This got me thinking.
Looking back, my Windows 95 PC (Pention II 266 MHz) ran a graphical user interface with just 32 GB RAM. Of course most applications on it were written in plain C and C++, with a Windows API that was taylored to optimizing performance in application code. Nevertheless it seems excessive that my 16 GB macbook swaps occasionally without me doing much fancy stuff.
“Looking back, my Windows 95 PC (Pention II 266 MHz) ran a graphical user interface with just 32 GB RAM.”
I think you meant 32MB of RAM. Otherwise, you were spending way too much on RAM and NUMA hardware for a CPU with max of 3.5GB addressable memory per Windows box.
haha, indeed MB ;)
Could have made a fortune seeling a 32 GB RAM device back then i guess
You could’ve made a fortune just patenting one in the U.S.. ;)
This is one reason I use alternative ROMs on my phone. The level of customization is insane, including disabling animations. I’m so spoiled by it, I can’t stand manufacturer ROMs or even vanilla AOSP.
FWIW, there’s a setting in Android’s developer settings called “animation scale” that scales the duration of (some) animations. Why something like this isn’t an ordinarily available setting like Apple’s “reduced motion” mode I don’t know.
If you don’t game or do something with lots of video or images or crunch numbers, the only reason to upgrade these days is to keep up with websites.
And web browser security patches.
True. An old friend of mine got in contact recently to ask me for an advice regarding computer he intends to buy. After ~20 years he feels it is time to give up on his Pentium III. I am still astonished.
I gave up on a PIII 600 (128MB RAM) in 2007 - it served me over a decade as my daily driver and the only thing that ever broke in it was the power supply. Wish I could tell the same on recent hardware.
s/over/almost/
(didn’t know editing is blocked on lobste.rs after a while).
Great read! Thank you for sharing.