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I-R-O-N-Y

Let's not forget useless screen clutter. I'm speaking from experience with software IDEs. But then, that extends to an awfully large number of web sites also.
 
UI design though is atrocious today compared with 15 years ago. It's like they took every design principle and did the opposite. Still think w95 style desktop is MUCH simpler for a novice to understand than post Win7. I have not used modern MacOS and some of the new paradigms in Linux desktop have not been well received either. Websites have gone downhill too. Why is everything an icon? three horizontal lines suddenly meant menu? Why not just write 'Menu'? Everything like textboxes has unneeded css to the point you're not sure it is a text box. JavaScript to load images? Really? Ok if a site is interactive like discord, I can understand it being js-laden, but most sites it is totally unnecessary.

I can understand new tasks being resource hogs like playing HD video. But stuff that could be done 20+ years ago with an average computer should not.
A huge chunk of this is because things are designed around "dark patterns" these days. Literally anti-user user interface design. Intended to trick users in to giving up personal information, accepting advertising, or spending money.

"Do you want to give up your privacy now?"
"[YES!] [Maybe later]"

One of the things people forget about icons is that icons ARE a damn language. You have to learn what each of those vague little pictures are supposed to represent. And then you have to re-learn them every time there is a major update that chances the style all around.

Sometimes I think that Microsoft would love nothing more to do away with all other languages and make the next version of Microsoft Office Esperanto-only. (Or more likely, a Microsoft bastardized version of Esperanto).

Since "modern" web design is mentioned.... just STOP STOP STOP STOP with the full motion video backgrounds! That makes sites impossible to read with everything jumping around behind the text. Same goes for those hypnotic sliding image carousels. I consider myself lucky to have never had a full actual seizure, but the way web design is going, I don't think I'll be able to avoid that.
 
I second the emotion. I was using Excel 97' to document some settings on a new guitar pedal I designed a while back on my 486 DX4 and was shocked to find even back then, in the 90's, we had separate "sheets" within a spreadsheet. So why do I need to use Excel 365 when I can use Excel 97', fit the XLS file on a floppy diskette with some nice, and easy to read formatting. Oh I know - (late stage) CAPITALISM.

As an I.T. pro, something I've noticed about these new UI designs is that they sometimes beautify the interface so much it's hard to tell where the decoration ends and the functionality begins - ie white bar with a soft or slight gradient, with a tiny, 4pt carat for an arrow, for some kind of basic function. I get that a lot of it now is to "slimline" the look or make it "easy for touch" but it seems to me a lot of what they really end up doing is ruining the UI of any usability from a regular person. Hell, I get confused by the modern UI's sometimes because of these tiny or subtle changes that are supposed to suggest a function, but with a contrast setting different, or heck, even just on the norm, it looks like nothing is there and/or the icon for it is not immediatley obvious. This is why I'm a huge fan of the old style Windows 95 and Windows 3.1x icon style - because it's so low-res, cartooney, and blatent, it's hard to miss that you have an icon. What's funny is this seems to mostly be a problem with commercial software moreso than with Open Source - which I have heard "normies" call "ugly" or "outdated" - but the thing is, sometimes, something "ooooooold" might actually be better suited functionality wise if the "new" style is damaging things that the old style developers did not have to account for originally.
You make a valif point. Office 97 is and was excellent. I use office 2003 with the 2007 update patches so it can use .***x file associations. mostly because its not resource intensive and I cannot use tbe ribbon. it destroyed my productivity. was using office since ver 3 and i knew where everything was. why wouls i want a hosted program rather than having my files safe on my computer? Why would I want a bloated program to do something i could have done on a 386 faster?
 
What tasks you can use a computer for, has always interested me. OK they are all universal Turing machines but practicably. In the mid 80s DTP is what set the high-end PCs from the low end. Didn't really become sensible until VGA and square pixels. Early 90s it was Multimedia, and late 90s i guess video editing and CAD. Sure you can find earlier examples of these tasks being done, but usually they require specialist hardware.

With the exceptions of HD video and 4K playback/editing. What are the tasks that a 2020 PC can do, that a 2010 PC can't?

Oh i forgot gaming.
 
You can game on a high end 2010 PC since most of the work is done with the GPU these days. The real limitation of a 2010 PC is nvme support (or lack of) plus RAM limitations.
 
You can game on a high end 2010 PC since most of the work is done with the GPU these days. The real limitation of a 2010 PC is nvme support (or lack of) plus RAM limitations.

I think that's been a thing even longer. Back in 2003, I had a Pentium III 667MHz and a Pentium Pro 200MHz, I put several 3D games including Robot Arena 2 and The Sims on them, and both ran them at pretty closely the same speed - both had NVIDIA GeForce Mx400 PCI cards in them with 64MB of RAM. That pretty much tells me that the GPU has been doing a lot since then, and also means pretty much the last time the actual COMPUTER made that much of a difference was the mid 90's on back.

The game that's the KING of software bloat for me is Monster Truck Destruction. Does not matter what PC you have it on, unless it's a Ryzen Threadripper with 32GB/RAM and a $445 Video Card, it runs best with all extra crap disabled and the detail dumbed down on any system - on a game designed to sell for $7 on Steam with way lower minimum system requirements.

Meanwhile, I managed to get Five Nights at Freddy's to attempt to start up in Windows 95 on a 486 with a 2MB VESA video card. The friggin TITLE SCREEN came up for a few seconds and I heard the sound initialize. Plan to try in 2K....would love to see the look on ol' Cawthon's face if I actually got it to run, LOL.
 
Well, the GPU still needs to be feed and CPU has other tasks in game to deal with.



CPU Model
GPU Model
P Rating
GPU Score
CPU Score
I7-2600K​
R9-270X​
27567​
28948​
24116​
FX-4100​
GTX 660​
15461​
20092​
9140​
FX-4100​
R9-280X​
18065​
26930​
9089​
I7-980X​
R9-280X​
33627​
34555​
31122​
I3-4160​
GTX 660​
20021​
24735​
12739​
FX-4100​
R9-270X​
16507​
22898​
8984​
E3-1240 V3​
GTX 660​
25831​
25293​
27591​

I was fixing some video cards for my collection and did some testing on a few systems using 3dmark vantage. You can see that a low performance CPU affects the GPU score quite a bit.
 
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