[ip26]

There are a ton more "features" in the OS

Including things you like quite a bit, such as WiFi support, thread scheduling, and suspend modes that are worth a damn.

XP could be snappy, but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked, how the battery didn't last more than an hour, and so on.

Also worth remembering everyone always has a browser open today. In the XP days, you were running Firefox 1.0, a 5MB program.

[userbinator]

XP could be snappy, but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked, how the battery didn't last more than an hour, and so on.

That is a hardware issue. XP can use far more cores, and I bet if you had the drivers, it would run much better than 10 or 11 on a recent laptop and give even better battery life.

[fuzzfactor]

>XP can use far more cores

Only for the 64-bit version, which was very uncommon for most of the XP lifetime.

Almost everybody on XP was using a 32-bit version, which only uses two cores at the most.

Using select 2014 PC's which are about the newest you could get that still supported XP and where proper XP drivers were easily available, a lot can still be done to make direct performance comparisons. These would be the first generation consumer/business UEFI PC's, originally shipped with 64-bit Windows 8. But also still offering drivers for W7, Vista, and XP if you were to prefer to install those instead or multiboot to them. Also among the first target machines to be expected to migrate to Windows 10 as soon as it became "the final Windows version going forward" from Windows 8.x. Some can have W11 installed without real difficulty too, and it runs the same apps correctly just like W10 without much more sluggishness.

But if you don't need more than 3.x GB of memory, and try W10 32-bit, you may find it's a lot less slow than W11. This is where nobody can deny it.

OTOH with XP 32-bit on the same hardware (including SSD and HD graphics) with all proper system drivers, nothing about it can be considered slow by comparison.

Much faster than almost all professional users of XP remember from back then, because 2014 hardware was so much more performant than 2004 or 2010.

On only two cores it just blows everything else away.

Except for Windows 98 of course on the same hardware without even proper system drivers (naturally only using a single core), but you have to remove all but 1GB of memory for that.

[userbinator]

Almost everybody on XP was using a 32-bit version, which only uses two cores at the most.

Where did that misinformation come from? In the late 2000s, quad-core Q6600s were very common at the time and they certainly had all 4 cores active under 32-bit XP.

[toast0]

I think there's a misunderstanding about the processor limits. I can't find an official doc because everyone links to a KB article that must have showed them in the past, but now talks about virtual memory...

But XP docs talk about a limit on the number of processors that is a limit on the number of sockets. If you've got an old quad pentium 2 system, with four slotted processors, XP Pro is only going to run on two of them, because it has a 2 processor limit. But multiple cores/threads are subject to a different limit that I can't find. Home may have been single socket?

Some people might have tried to run it in virtualization, and not been careful to setup virtualized cpus as cores in a single socket rather than multiple sockets.

[M95D]

My wife's new laptop (some Acer...) with preinstalled Win11 won't sleep and won't hibernate. My old Tinkpad X60 with WinXP Tablet can do both. So... not a valid argument.

[hulitu]

> XP could be snappy, but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked,

I have a work laptop with Win 10 and Ryzen with 6 Cores. To say it multitasks is a lie.

But the good thing is that the damn thing runs 3 security suites. For compliance.

[marshray]

"such as WiFi support, thread scheduling, and suspend modes that are worth a damn."

Thread scheduling has existed since NT 3.51.

Wifi is largely just another kind of network adapter.

XP supported the same suspend-to-RAM and hibernate-to-disk modes as todays systems.

"but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked"

Despite what certain processor vendors tell you, the number of threads are determined by each running program. Whatever you mean by "poor multitasking", you were probably short on RAM.

The OS has made improvements that can help with battery life, but most of any perceived improvement has come from batteries that suck less.

"In the XP days, you were running Firefox 1.0, a 5MB program."

5 MB was never a realistic estimate of process RAM.

[panzi]

> 5 MB was never a realistic estimate of process RAM.

They probably meant "Firefox Setup 1.0.exe" was 5 MB.

[fbdab103]

Sleep has become significantly worse in Windows. Many complaints of how a supposedly sleeping laptop cooked itself to death in a backpack overnight.

I also think it would be worth considering changes in underlying hardware. A modern laptop no longer has a spinning HDD, probably a much bigger battery, and a CPU that is better at entering low power modes when possible.

[pants2]

It was around the third time that my laptop overheated itself while "asleep" in my backpack that I decided to return it and get a MacBook.

[toast0]

My work mac never seemed to overheat itself, but it would routinely be warm and out of battery when I took it out of my bag if I wasn't very careful about what was running when it went to sleep. If Outlook was left running, look out.

[philomath_mn]

It is amazing that "goes to sleep properly when I close the lid" is a competitive advantage for a laptop in 2024. My X1 Carbon would bake itself in my backpack all the time but my new work mac has been perfect so far.

[NoGravitas]

"Modern sleep" is such a scam. The only way to safely suspend a Windows machine now is to go into the registry and re-enable hibernation.

[freedomben]

Indeed. My understanding is that it's a hardware issue with (largely) Intel. Sleep is really bad on Linux too and that is the reason given.

[alx_the_new_guy]

Basically, this

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...

Linus tech tips made some decent videos on the topic. But basically, what this apparently boils down to, is Microsoft wants to control system power states from the OS instead of relying on the implementation different manufacturers provide in their BIOS or something.

And there are good reasons to do so, and in concept, it's a decent idea, but the feature just isn't filly ready yet, especially in terms of it being supported by software.

There is a link to SleepStudy at the bottom of that article, which is a piece of software that, from what I understood from it's description, lets you track _why_ your laptop is hot and bothered while riding in your backpack.

In the end, it could be Software (whatever programs you run), OS, BIOS or really hardware related. Probably makes it really hard to understand what _actually_ causes the problem.

[kenny11]

If that were the case then it should have affected Intel-based MacBooks too, and that does not seem to have been widespread.

[HansHamster]

> Including things you like quite a bit, such as WiFi support A while ago I set up Win 98 on an old P2 laptop from 1998 I found in the trash at work. Even that can do WiFi with WPA2. It was a pain to set up and requires 3rd party software to establish the connection, but aside from that it works just like any other network card.