I was curious, so did a quick web search, which claims that 300ms is the average reaction time and plenty of people run faster than that.

But I think the question was the other way: Why couldn't calc.exe launch in 300ms?

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refulgentis 4 hours ago | parent [-]

300 ms is way longer than they budgeted; separately, I was alive then and it's a ridiculous claim, like, it takes a general bias we all have towards seeing the past with rose-colored glasses and takes it farcically far.

Don't want to clutter too much, I'm already eating downvotes, so I'll link:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642003

	▲	chungy an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I have Windows 95 on a Pentium 120 MHz and calc.exe is instantaneous enough that it's probably much less than 300ms to launch. XP's calculator is hardly any different than 95. It's easy to believe that launching it on a Core 2 Duo of all things is also instant.