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.