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A comment on Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983. Parent comment

Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha... by bonaldi on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @12:47PM (#15645652)
We've even managed to slow down things like Excel 97. I played with a 486 laptop recently, and was completely amazed at how fast things like Word felt (once they'd loaded off the ancient hard disk).

The most immediately notable part was the typing, which felt completely instantaneous. I haven't found out exactly why, but the switch from serial to USB keyboard interfaces (and the lag therein) as well as the various windowing pipeline "improvements" over the years seem to be in the mix.

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Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha... by freyir on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @02:12PM (#15646491)
Relevant post on keyboard latency here: https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/

Takeaway: today’s keyboards are slow. Even gaming keyboards marketed as fast are slow. There’s more latency just in today’s keyboards than the entire end-to-end latency in an Apple II system from 1977.

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Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha... by nextos on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @01:41PM (#15646191)
Old PS/2 keyboards are faster than USB because they were based on interrupts. That said, I think the cause underlying perceived low speed on modern platforms is more a bloat and inefficiency problem. Things are totally out of control. The PS/2 slight advantage over USB is an anecdote.
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Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha... by stuaxo on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @05:29AM (#15651128)
There were recently some benchmarks of USB keyboards and they all add quite a lot of latency, even the so called gaming keyboards.
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Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha... by gugagore on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @01:28PM (#15646056)
on PCs, keyboards were never "serial" as in "the serial port"(mice were), but they were always "serial" in the same way that the USB port is "serial". Perhaps it's better said that the switch from a special-purpose interface to USB is what introduced lag.
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Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha... by crankylinuxuser on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @02:16PM (#15646531)
I know on microcontrollers, if you want to reduce jitter (by sometimes up to a magnitude), you disable USB. Ive noticed my interrupt loops on ARMs go way down when the micro doesn't have to service USB.

But then you have to use an STLink to upload programs.

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Re:Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower tha... by PeachPlum on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @02:12PM (#15646488)
The Word processor on my 8 Bit Computer (BBC Micro) is ready to type into about 2 seconds from when I switch the power on.
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