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PaulHoule 2 hours ago

What am I supposed to do, drive 300 miles to the nearest Genius Bar?

madeofpalk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What would you do if your non-Apple computer was having performance issues?

PaulHoule 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'd say this. I haven't had a Windows desktop computer with serious problems since 2007.

I had a long string of Windows laptops that were basically OK from maybe 2013 to 2023 except for problems with USB that got progressively worse over time (for each machine.) I think some of them were were real hardware problems but I think also the USB 3 spec doesn't guarantee that you can plug in very many devices and have it work, it depends on the PCIe architecture inside the machine. That "ding" sound when a USB device disconnects from windows has traumatized me and I've turned it off anywhere where I can because it is like a gunshot to a Vietnam vet.

I found very little literature about other Windows laptops users facing these problems but endless posts by AppleCare frequent fliers who seem to spend their lives at the Genius Bar and getting their old defective laptops replaced with new defective laptops, I think Windows users just expect it to be all screwed up.

For a long time Windows has struggled with processes that suck down a lot of resources at boot time. At home it is things that do software updates and saturate my 2x20Mbps internet connection. At work it is the backup program that saturates my Ethernet.

bornfreddy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Debug it? Swap some components? Good luck with that on that shiny closed box.

stefanfisk 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What have you tried?

PaulHoule an hour ago | parent [-]

Mostly getting stuff done on the Windows machine in the next room or playing music off a different stereo or playing music on cassette tape or minidisc on the same stereo, etc. It's easier to fall back to a world of 20th century electronics where latency is imperceptible than it is to dive into a world of third-party apps that were all designed around somebody's inscrutable KPIs but didn't consider at all my convenience or inconvenience. Probably it is Creative Cloud updating or some software for the mouse or some kind of crap and if I sat in front of the machine for 30 minutes it might settle down but it's rare that I sit in front of it for 30 minutes. It used to be that kind of thing wrecked the Windows experience but over a long period of time Microsoft did a lot of work to balance to load of startup processes and mostly you don't feel it.

My wife browses the web a lot on that Mac, she hasn't complained since I installed Firefox + uBlock Origin but maybe she expects it to be slow.