I had/have an i3 2.5GHz (M380) laptop, IIRC from around 2011, which I had tried to upgrade recently with a top of the line SSD, Windows 10 and 8 GB RAM to extend its life. While Windows 10 was definitely better than I'd anticipated, overall it's still painfully slow browsing the web (except for HN of course).

So I broke down and got a new laptop with an i7 8650U, and it is disturbing how much faster it is, considering the base frequency seems to be significantly lower (1.9). I am wondering whether there is some now-ubiquitous function, perhaps relating to encryption that is accelerated on newer processors. Single threaded benchmarks only indicate it should be 2x as fast, but there is far more of a difference than that. Without identifying what the improvement is, I have the nagging doubt I should've identified a software problem on my old computer. I did try Linux on it, and that was not stunningly fast either.

So I would be happy with my new PC, except that I'm wary I'm being flim-flammed with software that makes old hardware run like crap, and the performance is an illusion. But hey, maybe the hardware has improved in 7 years. I remember when that was an eternity.