This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Not sure why it would be unexpected? 8.1 was not a good OS from a UI perspective, but it was the last version before Microsoft went all in on making Windows a service and not a product you paid to use.
They still had the incentive to make the OS better and faster. I remember videos from Microsoft at the time showing how fast Windows 8 could get to the desktop compared to 7. They don't really even try to work on stuff like that anymore.
Windows 8 also had to run on atom CPUs with dire CPU performance and even more dire memory configs. So even once it was booted it needed to be relatively slim and quick. I actually preferred it at the time because it was faster than 7.
I miss the Intel Atom, not because I wanted to use it, but because of the positive impact it had on big tech and software bloat. I wish we could bring it back, but it seems nowadays, even Chromebooks have 16 GB of RAM and an i5.
but it seems nowadays, even Chromebooks have 16 GB of RAM and an i5.
That is extremely far from the truth. Yes, there are a handful of Chromebook with such specifications, but the vast majority has an underpowered ARM chip and 4gb of ram
The atom is only gone in name. It’s now just “intel processor”. The N100 CPUs are in a ton of neat machines. And the E cores of Intel CPUs are just Atom cores.
Those 2 in 1 baytrail laptops were so underpowered, but damn, they're so cool
Windows 8 was where Microsoft went all-in on optimizing Windows to run on low-power tablets to compete with the iPad. It's mostly remembered for the terrible tablet-first full-screen "start menu", but also continued the work to trim away all the Vista bloat that had started with Windows 7 (where the motivation was to make it work on netbooks so they could finally stop shipping XP)
all the Vista bloat that had started with Windows 7
The fuck?? Vista predates Win7, that sentence makes no sense
Windows 7 was based on Vista, and started the job of trimming away Vista's bloat, which 8 continued.
the work (to trim all the Vista bloat) that had started with Windows 7
Could be phrased better but it makes sense to me
You're getting downdooted, but I was stuck on rereading that nonsensical sentence, as well, and I'm glad it was clarified.
I basically jumped from XP to 8.1 and I was amazed at how much of an improvement 8.1 was on a technical level. Yes, the UI was horrendous, and any usability expert should have been able to tell you it was a terrible idea, but apparently they weren't listened to. Luckily there was Classic Shell that restored a proper Start Menu, so I never had to use the horrible touch interface.
8.1 was the last good Windows (with caveats). When support ended I went back to Linux, because 10 and 11 are enshittified to all hell.
I agree, 8.1 with Classic Shell was good. I also liked Windows Media Center.
I hung on through 10, but last year, as I learned more about Win 11, I decided to finally bite the bullet and figure how to switch to Linux.
The underlying work on Win 8 was really good... Just not the front end
The computers get faster and the software gets slower. Tale as old as time.
* as old as unix time
Markdown formatted that as a bullet point. You can avoid that by putting a backslash in front of the asterisk.
Typing this:
\* Test Message
Will get this:
* Test Message
Without backslash:
- Test Message
Even the older Windows XP managed 50 tabs, and that's because it kept crashing past that number because of its paging file failing to keep up, not because it had hit the 5GB memory ceiling.
Windows XP 32bit can't hit 5gb memory ceiling, the 32bit memory addresses don't allow that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
Not at release. It came later though for certain chipsets.
Wasn't there a bug that made XP unable to hit even 4GB, I seem to recall a limit of 3,5GB ram....
Short answer, no, there were artificial limitations to ensure compatibility. Plenty of long-form answers if you care to search.
It was 3.2GB and afaik it wasn't a bug, but 800MB was reserved for hardware IO
Seems like every hardware upgrade just makes software worse because they can just brute force it.
Optimization?
What's that?
Fascinating that the browser using so much RAM is the OS's fault, not the browser's. Though, it using more RAM could be considered a good thing if it sped up page loading, but apparently that's not the case with Win11.
At first: Stop posting Tomshardware! They just bulk repost ad-enriched low quality clickbait content without validating anything (cough 9700X3D). Just post the original video.
As the video creator said in it's disclaimer, the test is probably not accurate:
Okay but can't we just post an article?
Why does everything need to be a video? I am more sick of Everything needs to be a video then I am of This meeting could've be an email.
I think their main issue lies with Tomshardware, not the medium of an article
It's the same exact laptop, the tests ran sequentially but were edited so that the video shows them in parallel. Since it's the same hardware in each test and only the OS changes, it's a perfectly fine setup for comparison.
I have fond memories of Windows XP working well.
Do not have fond memories of the multi-dvd game installations, but I still have my library of physical games. :)
Nothing sucked more than buying a used game only for it to ask for disc 5 to be inserted to continue, when it only came with 4!
Oh, true, but back then game companies would sell you those single disks you needed. My copy of Baldur's Gate 2 was missing one that I was able to replace for a few bucks.
In hindsight, I kinda miss the awesome customer service that used to exist.
Idk a tiny almost imperceptible scratch causing you to retry installing 3 or 4 times might a contender. At least the missing disk is a clear error.
This is not a proper test. Windows does optimizations on the first few boots which makes the startup take longer. As it's not mentioned in the video, we have to assume this was not accounted for, which completely invalidates the results.
Well considering almost every time I reboot it seems to do a windows update, those optimizations are probably running every time anyway. It's almost fair.
I thought it being Toms was enough to discount any actual evidence.
Tom's has become a disappointment. It's been like that for years, since the buyout.
i still like 7 better
The UI of 7 plus the kernel of 10, and the marketing approach of XP, would make a windows that might come close to being as good as linux today and certainly wouldn't be enabling linux to steal even a few % of market share.
Interesting. I've always said that I liked 8.1 the most out of all Windows versions. With classic startup, it was basically a more stable, faster Win7 that had newer DirectX and fastboot. Too bad it died with 8.0 and so 8.1 never got any market share, but damn was it awesome.
Saw this video on YouTube a few days ago, it’s really interesting. Seemed like XP, 7 and (somehow 8.1) ran pretty good. Here’s the video for anyone wanting to see it :P https://youtu.be/7VZJO-hOT4c
Tho while 8 may be more performant, it’s also less usable imo. Would like to see how this stacks up with different OSs!
I always said that 8.1 is the most optimized even compared to 7 (mostly because they launched it together with phone version which shared a lot of stuff with 8 so it includes a lot of optimizations under the hood). Most people never cared to use it apparently.
Personally I don't think an Os has any business but tying my hardware together and running apps I install myself.
The amount of services/bloat on Windows now is completely ridiculous and your pc is basically 70 percent their spy device and 30 percent what you bought it for.
