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by binary_ninja 1097 days ago
I feel like the intent was to say notepad from 20 years ago and notepad from today has (approx) the same functionality whereas the processors are x4 times faster, it should be at least as fast as it was before, shouldn't it? In my mind, regardless of the OS requirements, a processor x4 more powerful shouldn't need double the time to launch the same program unless you've added x4+ features.
3 comments

Notepad back then could only edit 32kB maximum files, even on 32bit NT, it was literally all the text widget could handle.

So no, it's not really fair to compare a 'simple' text editor.

It is a fair comparison.

If you edit the same 1KB file on each computer side by side the 30 year old computer will be more responsive than the modern one.

That's what people are taking issue with.

Heh, I've not any one talk about AV and things like the smart screen filter.

A huge number of security related things are going on.

Also windows logs a ton of telemetry these days.

I think the stock Notepad in Windows 10 is perfectly fine and speedy at least, I've never considered it too slow unless I open a huge file with word wrapping on.

Notepad2 is my all-time favorite though. It supports key features like line numbers and directionless search, but is much closer to stock than Notepad++. [0]

[0] https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

Notepad on NT4 could edit files as large as you had memory. I never used 3.5 but I guess they must have made that change in NT4.
64KB.
Another very similar example to this is the adding text feature in MS Paint. I noticed that somehow on the Windows 11 version, it takes many seconds after clicking the "add text" button to be able to actually start typing. Previously, it was instantaneous.
I can start notepad on my relatively slow Win10 VM with spinning disks in RAID and it starts with similar speeds - starting it on my physical windows machine with a SSD, it launches at exactly the same speed.