this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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With 16gb of RAM and 102% CPU, the computer shows you a UI on any underlying hardware, any monitor/tv/whatever, handles a moise, keyboard, sound, handles any hardware interruption, probably fetches and sends stuff to the internet, scans your disk to index files so you can search almost instantly through gigabytes of storage whether it's USB sticks, ssds, harddrive, nvme drive. And probably a lot of other stuff I'm forgetting. Meanwhile the other thingy with 4kb ram did college math problems. Impressive for the time yes, but that's it.
Yes, nowadays there is a lot of inefficiency, but that comparison does not, and never did, make sense.
You are being practical. I would say the fair amount of RAM in usage achieving all those tasks is 512MB. Just checked my Gentoo box with XFCE and Bluetooth & PulseAudio crap running, no tuning, merely 700MB of RAM in use.
Sure, then you can start libreoffice calc and go up to around 1g of ram and close to 0% CPU anyway.
My point wasn't on exact numbers because obviously the ones in the image are made up, unless that excel file is a monster of macros, VBA scripts and connections to numerous data lakes.
And yet Windows 7 did all these things 10 years ago faster than Win 11 does them now.
We had most of this with Windows 7 and probably XP as well. Those used a fraction of the RAM, disk space, and CPU time for largely the same effect as today.