300ms is a lot of time, especially if the calculator.exe was in disk cache already.

300 ms is a long time on a computer, definitely. Just, the autistic side of me has to speak up when it’s wildly unrealistic glorification of the past.

Keypress duration is likely much less than 300 ms, top Google result claims 77 ms on average. And that’s down and up.

I see it being in cache already as sort of game playing, i.e. we can say anything is instant if we throw a cache in front of it. Am I missing something about caching that makes it reasonable? (I’m 37, so only 18 around that time and wouldn’t have had the technical chops to understand it was normal for things to be in disk cache after a cold boot)

Okay, let's say the cache is cold and you're on an old clunky spinning rust 5400 RPM hard drive. Do the math. How long will it take, worst case, for the platter to spin to where calc.exe is stored?

For a 5400 RPM drive, worst-case rotational latency is one full rotation: 5400/60 = 90 rev/sec, so ~11ms. Average is half that (~5.5ms). If you also need to seek (yes, we'll definitely need to move on both axes in the worst case scenario requested, likely all the time), 2006-era datasheets show average seek around 11-12ms, with full-stroke seeks around 21-22ms. So worst case total access: ~33ms.

Seagate Momentus 5400.3 manual (2005): https://www.seagate.com/support/disc/manuals/ata/100398876a....

Hitachi Travelstar 5K120 (2006):http://www.ggsdata.se/PC/Bilder/hd/5K120.pdf

WD Scorpio (October 2007): https://theretroweb.com/storage/documentation/2879-001121-a1...

If you had used calculator earlier that uptime, it wouldn't be crazy. It's a small exe.

I admit you got me mildly anmoyed with the sports nonsense, sorry about that.

Anyway, you're talking about reaction time, which isn't actually relevant. The time between an action (pressing a button, or flipping a switch) and seeing the result happen isn't the same as the time it takes you to re-act to that something. Flip a light switch, does the light turn off instantly, or does it take a full third of a second? I guarantee you can tell the difference. 300ms of latency is actually huge and easily perceptible, even if it's faster than you can react.