Excel loads in ~1 second...and doesn't have UI lag after it does.

Try working with large data sets in Google Docs and you'll have that 2-3 second lag time with _every_ operation you perform.

On the flip side, the new Windows "Metro" style calculator app takes several seconds to load ... and is less usable than the old calc.exe.

I've found this so often, I have a dual Xeon and 16GB of RAM and a calculator of all things taking more than a second is unacceptable.

I got a popup inside the calculator asking for feedback about it once with an inbuilt form and submission. I can only assume it has toooooons of hidden away cruft that does everything but assist in calculating things.

I can see it now.

Manager: All apps have to use this feedback framework now, no exceptions. Getting feedback is super important so we can be more Agile!

Dev: ok... uh, but this is 40x the size of all of calc.exe. Plus it's just a calculator and we've refined it for years so it's pretty good already. Isn't that kinda nuts?

Manager: metrics! Feedback! Agile! Just do it!

IMHO calc.exe has been getting worse since XP:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791667

(Note that the "Calculator Plus" mentioned there has --- not suprisingly(!?) --- disappeared from Microsoft's download center, but you can still find the official, signed installer by searching for "CalcPlus.msi".)

It takes maybe half a second on my 4 year old Core I5.

Sometimes it does. I've seen this happen on several machines, some containing recent i7s. And if it does "pop up" quick, it has a loading screen. Let that sink in. It actually has a full-colour screen while it figures out how to render a few numbers and buttons. FFS.

Which is still kinda impressive given that calc.exe starts in milliseconds.

Or try working with it over an intermittent connection, everything goes haywire.

If you don't have plug-ins, Word 2010 (which, even without plugins is far more functional than Google Docs) loads in under half a second on a modern machine.

I really can't reproduce that. I used MS Office since Office '97, and even Office 2000 on a Windows 98 machine loaded in about three seconds. Nowadays, with Office 2010 or newer you won't even see the splash screen anymore. Start menu -> click -> poof, application is there. Google Docs is nowhere near that.