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by a_random_canuck 741 days ago
100%.

Even just loading files off the old spinning disks took ages. Loading screens for a game could take 5-10 minutes.

Even just booting into my Linux box took 3-5 minutes and optimizing the boot time was a whole thing you spent a lot of time on.

I remember the day I received my first SSD and installed it in my computer, it was like Christmas morning. Things are way faster now.
1 comments
SkipperCat 741 days ago
I had a friend who supported a Windows desktop environment in the 90's. He would constantly complain about how rebooting a workstation would take over 20 minutes. The amount of scripts and other tooling was nutz.

My Macbook goes off when I shut the lid and right back on when I open it up. Try doing that on my early 90's Toshiba Satellite.

We live in a magical world now of high speed, multi-core and NVMe hardware. I have no desire to ever go back.

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musicale 740 days ago
> My Macbook goes off when I shut the lid and right back on when I open it up. Try doing that on my early 90's Toshiba Satellite.

Even the first Mac Portable[1] had fast sleep/wake. As did the Radio Shack Model 100[2] from the early 1980s. Early Apple laptops could spin down the hard drive (vs. modern Macs where you can't easily shut off I/O-intensive background daemons like mdworker, syspolicyd, photoanalysisd, etc.; fortunately SSDs mitigate the issue somewhat.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

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The_Colonel 741 days ago
That reminds me that 10 years ago, I could close a (Windows, Linux) laptop and open it a couple of days later and it would instantly turn on, using the amazing S3 sleep. Doing the same these days and... the laptop doesn't turn on at all, because the battery is dead (caused by modern standby). Yay, progress!
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kaydub 741 days ago
It honestly gives me a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about how blazing fast personal computers are these days.

It's instantaneous compared to the 90s and even the 2000s. It wasn't until 2010-2012 that I remember switching to SSD, which is when I feel the turning point was.

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oxidant 741 days ago
I had a netbook around this time and putting an SSD in it was a HUGE upgrade (similarly the upgrade from 2 to 4GB RAM).

I still have it, and when I put an 32bit version of Debian on it a couple years ago, it was molasses. Somehow I used it for years with no complaints.

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SkipperCat 740 days ago
When I upgraded my Windows laptop (running Windows NT) from something like 64 MB to 128 MB, it made a huge difference. Most of the benefit was that it stopped using swap. Sadly, I was borrowing the the DIMM from my boss and I had to give it back. It was like flying back on coach after getting there in first class.
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