The INTERNET is killing old PC hardware

I mean it's not literally killing old PC hardware, but it is meaning old PCs are now becoming worthless e-waste (aka dead) because they can't browse websites like YouTube and playback videos... The internet is not designed for older hardware anymore, so it doesn't really matter what operating system you put on it, normal websites are now so multi-media rich and advert packed, that older hardware is going to struggle. In this video I try Windows 8.1 and Puppy Linux on old hardware (ASUS X102B touch-screen laptop, with AMD A4-1200 dual-core 1GHz, 4GB RAM, SSD drive), to see how it performs with a news website (The Guardian) and YouTube video playback...

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Video recorded using:

#rant #youtube #internet #oldpc #hardware #windows8 #puppylinux #linux

[joshwa]

I've made a couple of follow up videos to this:

[Vorticough]

this is another reason why ad blocking is important
ads significantly impact performance

[knightsofnee]

We've reached an age of non-optimized media everywhere. Videogames, websites, office apps etc. Devs seem to be rushed to release software products instead of optimizing and stabilizing them.

[TheQuixoticRambler]

You shouldn't need 8 GB of ram and some relatively new chipset to run a standard multimedia website on a contemporary browser.

[jackfroste]

I still remember when websites that offered a lite version of their site for people with slow connections

[TommyViper]

The internet is full of bloat and unoptimized code. Even something that looks super simple like the Google homepage has gotten more complicated than it was say 20 years ago. I miss the days when the internet had quality content, not flashy and fancy looking websites that have about 4 times the amount of code than they actually need to have.

[erenoz]

The internet is basically unusable without adblockers at this point.

[Akahigep]

Honestly, modern hardware needs adblockers too

[guntcheck]

I was a software engineer for 21 years. I wrote everything from code for missiles, to code for MRI machines, to MOM engines and even web. I noticed a flood of pseudo engineers around 2008-2010. Web developers mostly. Very inefficient code. That is the main reason for this. The second, is widespread adoption of agile.

[CamelCasee]

I remember when youtube worked fine on a single core early 2000's system, then suddenly it needed a dual core just to play 360p videos.

[k]

Remove all the trackers and bloatware from the websites and 80% of the issue is resolved immediately. When the internet moved away from hobbiests to businesses trying to bleed every bit of ad space or data reaing opportunities out of their visitors, that's when the issues started.

[hermanodelalmasinpar]

Not long ago, people used to say "my grampa just needs and old PC to browse the internet and check e-mail". Well, now he needs something much better.

[AirCicilia]

The more powerful they make the hardware, the less effort is put into coding and code optimization. So don't call the old processors slow, call the new developers lazy.

[antenna_prolly]

we should've kept mid-2000s internet with today's hardware

[livingthedream]

I use an old machine and one of the easiest things to do is change the user agent to a mobile phone style user agent, which results in significantly less load on the browser.
it's not a silver bullet however and I agree with your points.

[sagwan-square]

Crazily, my old core 2 duo pc can actually game faster (modern games, mind you), than it plays youtube videos

[cranebird]

The real problem why an old computer cannot keep up with the modern Internet is CSR (client side rendering) content, when JavaScript became the only engine for a browser.

[YouTubdotCub]

the NoScript extension is NECESSARY, not just adblockers but full on script blocking that breaks website functionality so you can turn scripts on and off and figure out what's essential for functioning and what's useless bloat

[OceanusHelios]

The browsers are also the issue. In Linux you can search youtube from the terminal and play the video bare. I use ytfzf which is youtube fuzzy fetch which lets me do just that. It cuts out the middle man. It just gives me the video by itself.

[technoWZ]

I've been saving old laptops with Linux, and its amazing that you can somehow manage to revive the old hardware. The netbooks aren't particularly usable, but they can still be used for basic tasks.