What makes our computers feel fast?

[suryad]

Just curious but is 2k3 good at gaming and so on? DirectX run on it with no probs? I realize that 2k3 is based on XP SP1 codebase and it is virtually identical...(I think)...

 

[mreman4k]

So, why would people (who don't play recent games) buy a new computer or OS every few years if it was lean and mean like that? There would be no reason. Look at the current generation: without much faster processors and a new, even more resource hungry OS, the computer you bought three years ago is still going strong.

What is ironic is that my computer (Dell Dim 8200 w/ 2.4GHz P4 and 512MB RDRAM) runs great and fast to be 3 years old. As a matter of fact, its running faster than it did when I got it and feels faster than my dads computer (P4 3.6GHz, Intel 925G) It was purchased for me in June '02.

 

[London Geezer]

What makes you PC feel fast?

Turning it off. At least i don't have to wait for it to do stuff.

 

[Diplo]

Lots of RAM, defrag your hard-drives, disconnect from internet (it's amazing how many things wait for responses from internet before doing something), disable un-needed services.

 

[Xenus]

Regular ar least weekly maintenance.

 

[wireframe]

Speaking of computers feeling fast (and me agreeing that the OS is key as software almost always fail to fully leverage the hardware), have any of you noticed that Windows XP (SP2) has become very sluggish as of late (probably some update)? I am talking basic window creation and destruction. Especially Internet Explorer seems to not close windows as fast as it once did, sometimes not responding to the close window command at all (clicking the red-white X). At first I thought it was particular to my main workstation, but then I saw the same thing on other PCs as well. I dunno, it just feels like the GUI is lagging badly some times. I have always been annoyed with the lag when sometimes you select a file, press delete, followed by a quick enter, and end up launching the file instead of sending it to the bin, but now it seems this has spread everywhere in the system.

Give it a try. Open a few Explorer windows (including or exclusively IE) and then try to close them as quickly as you can by pressing the upper right close window widget. Sometimes it stalls for over a second for me, prompting me to hit it again, then closing and having a second click 'buffered' it then closes the window underneath as well. Very annoying.

If the OS was more or less perfect, I think it's fair to say that besides a fast processor, a fast hard disk and lots of RAM helps keep things feeling snappy.

 

[Xenus]

Nope no problems there try clearing out your broswer cache and history, running ad-aware, or Norton"s Systemworks if you have it. Microsofts anti-spyware also allows you to clean out the cache on a few other programs as well. Don't forget to kill useless temp. files too.

 

[wireframe]

Nope no problems there try clearing out your broswer cache and history, running ad-aware, or Norton"s Systemworks if you have it. Microsofts anti-spyware also allows you to clean out the cache on a few other programs as well. Don't forget to kill useless temp. files too.

I should have said I have done all obvious things like check fo virii, purged caches (including the prefetch), spyware/malware, etc. I only brought it up because the more I experience others' PCs with XP SP2 the more I am seeing the same problem. So, I had more or less come to the conclusion that it is not particular to my system. I'll wait for some more responses, but otherwise...oh well, maybe it's just Windows and I am going speed blind again.

 

[Frank]

If you select some files and right-click, a very large amount of actions is triggered before the menu is build and displayed. Dragging or initiating other actions suffer from the same problem. This depends in part on the amount of actions that are on that menu, but on a lot of other background tasks as well. I started some time ago to forget about waiting minutes and use a command prompt instead, if handling many files or network drives.

There is a very large amount of actions that is performed all the time to "make things easier to the users". Disabling as much stuff as possible helps, but it's really the OS that is to blame. A GUI can get mightily irritating to power users if it is designed only for noobs. This is especially extremely irritating with servers, so I will only use Linux for those if there is any way at all I can get away with it.

Oh, and turn off the QoS packet planner for all your network connections. It slows things down pretty bad.