| ▲ | bluGill 4 hours ago |
| I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. Our internet was a lot slower than as well. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I remember using the web on 25mhz computers. It ran about as fast as it does today with a couple ghz. I know it’s a meme on HN to complain that modern websites are slow, but this is a perfect example of how completely distorted views of the past can get. No, browsing the web in the early 90s was slooow. Even simple web pages took a long time to load. As you said, internet connections were very slow too. I remember visiting pages with photos that would come with a warning about the size of the page, at which point I’d get up and go get a drink or take a break while it loaded. Then scrolling pages with images would feel like the computer was working hard. It’s silly to claim that 90s web browsers ran about as fast as they do today. |
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| ▲ | Tor3 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Browsing the web was slow, because the network was slow. It wasn't really because the desktop computers were slow. I remember our company having just a 64 kbit/s connection to the 'net, even as late as in 1997.. well, that was pretty good compared to the place where I was contracted to at the time, in Italy.. they had 19.2 kbit/s. Really big sites could have something much better, and browsing the internet at their sites was a different experience then, using the same computers. | |
| ▲ | nebula8804 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is probably me experiencing a simulacra but with that slow loading getting up to go get a drink workflow, each page load was more special. It was magical discovering new websites just like trying out new software by picking something up from those "pegboards" at computer stores. It also was a simpler time, the technology was in peoples lives but as a small side quest to their main lives. It took the form of a bulky desktop in the den or something like that. When you walked away from that beige box, it didn't follow or know about the rest of your life. A life where a Big Mac meal was only $2.99, a toyota corolla was $9-15k, houses were ~100k, and when average dev salaries were ~50k. That was a different life. I don't know why but I picture this music video that was included on the Windows 95 cd bonus folder when I think of this simulacra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc | |
| ▲ | ok_dad 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | No, I think he’s right. I don’t recall the web being any faster today than it was thirty years ago, download speed excepted. The overall experience is about the same, if not worse, IMO. | | |
| ▲ | pibaker 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Why would you make an exception for download speed? It was the reason why the internet was slow back then. This is like saying Victorian Britain wasn't polluted, except for all the coal burning. |
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| ▲ | raverbashing 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yeah slow? Try using a 2400baud modem, that was slow | |
| ▲ | exe34 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | what a glorious time that was! now it's too easy to get stuck looking at the stream of (usually AI generated) crap. I long for the time when the regular screen break was built-in. |
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| ▲ | peterfirefly 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It crashed a lot more, the fonts (and screens) were uglier, and Javascript was a lot slower. The good thing was that there was very little Javascript. |
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| ▲ | t-3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I remember using the web in the 90s. I often left to make a sandwich while pages loaded. |
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| ▲ | rbanffy an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Try opening Gmail on one of those. Won’t be fun. |
