rant

Got a new work laptop: 13th Gen Intel Core i7 with 10 cores, 32 GB RAM, SSD.

Also, Windows 11 Enterprise.

That machine is incredibly slow — to boot, to open apps, to do anything really.

Over the last 30 years we’ve progressed CPU clock rate, RAM latency, and SSD performance to insane levels. We all have computers that are multiple times more performant than a Cray of yore.

And yet the awful pile of steaming bloatware that is Windows and friends renders even modern mid-range machines aggravating to use, and not better than the user experience from the past three decades.

It feels like the headroom provided by leaps in hardware is being completely canceled by a lazy lack of optimization of the tech-debt-ridden software stack

/rant

I feel such an irrational anger whenever I use a Windows laptop. Desktops are ok.

The quality of life gap is huge between a macbook pro and even high end windows laptop. The fans and heat dissipation piss me off so much.

Thank you for this rant. You are not alone.