and things went downhill from there

I fired up Semagic this morning, got distracted, and then forgot what I had been planning to post. I only remember that it was one of those long-form topics I sometimes delve into on LJ/DW.

Oh well, it's gone. I'll wander into a different topic that raised its head this evening.

Somebody posted to the Windows10 subreddit today crowing about how he had managed to pare machine down to something like 30 background processes. He waxed poetic about how it freed up almost all of his memory and CPU cycles when the machine was idling.

He immediately attracted a following of people saying, "Teach us your ways, master." After a bit of wheedling, he released a list of all the services he had disabled.

While one group wrung their hands with glee and expressed their eagerness to try his wizardry, some of the more technically inclined started pouring through is list and saying, "This is insane."

In order to pare his system down to the point he'd reached, he'd had to disable a lot of core functions in the operating system. He'd disabled Windows updates, the firewall, malware/virus protection, download services, print services, a whole score of maintenance services ... as one person said, "I'd hate to see his Event Viewer after this with all the system errors this is creating."

Folks pointed out that this was the kind of thing started giving diminishing returns many years ago, and that modern hardware could handle a couple hundred background services without hurting performance. All he was really accomplishing was reducing his background system load when it was otherwise idling anyway.

The original poster admitted that he had not seen a measurable improvement in performance after stripping his system down the point of nigh crippling it, but he was stubbornly unapologetic about giving bad advice to a lot of less technically advanced people in the sub. I liked the way that one poster summed it up.

"Not to mention that it's pretty much pointless unless you have an exceptionally terrible PC. Hardware is meant to be used, there is no reason to fetishize having minimal utilization."

I get why people do it. This guy only used his computer as a media centre, and it still worked for that after he had stripped out most of the OS functionality. Still, by his own admission the only benefit he saw from that was a change on his resource monitor showing that less memory and CPU cycles were being utilized by services.

I don't see it as often now, but I still remember when Linux users took great glee in hopping into the forums of other operating systems to wax on about how their installation only needed 4K of memory and a single low-density 5 ¼ inch floppy disk to run. They seemed genuinely surprised when they were met with indifference, not understanding that they were offering solutions to problems that most people did not have.

I downloaded a really minimal Linux install a few years ago that installed and ran off of a single 3 ½ disk. It booted up in seconds, and it had a built-in web browser that was many times faster than any of the ones I was using at the time. That said, the browser only handled very basic rendering, and the OS only came with a couple of trivial games (solitaire and a couple of other low-impact ones like that) and not much else. I suppose I could have installed other things, but since it didn't recognize my HD, it would have to have been things I could install on the floppy.

I played around with it, was suitably impressed with how fast it was for the very few things it could do, and then never used it again. I appreciated it for what it was; a demo of how slim and fast somebody could make a thing while maintaining very basic functionality. It was simply of no use to me.

These guys who are stripping down Windows to that point are doing the same thing. They are doing things that made more sense back in 1998 when hardware was expensive and performance came at a premium. Now, they are not looking for an improved experience, they are obsessed with seeing how much they can reduce the numbers on the usage charts and still keep just enough of the OS working to perform the small number of things they do.

They are willing to trade QOL for a barely measurable increase in performance.

If I learned tomorrow that I could live to 100 by consuming nothing but water and boiled groats, or live to 99 and enjoy a proper diet, I'd take the proper diet.

Who wants to live to 100 under those conditions anyway?

I don't have it for my desktop yet, but I updated my Surface to Windows 10 earlier in the week. So far it feels much more like Windows 8.1 did than, say Windows 7. I didn't mind Windows 8, but I this feels like they put a bit more thought into it. Important things are more readily available at a single click, for example.

If you liked 8, you will probably like this. If you liked 7, you probably won't mind this. I am curious to see how it acts on my desktop, but on my Surface it defaulted to acting like a desktop OS, but it has the option to swap out its feel to be more tablet-friendly. Switching it to tablet-friendly mode swapped it to a Metro-like mode. It's recognizable as Metro, but a bit less clunky. Whether in desktop or tablet mode, it has a "Task View" button on the taskbar that brings up a tiled view of all your active tasks for quick switching.

Although I found that I did not really miss it in Windows 8, they have brought back a variation on the start button. It is nameless now, and simply has the same pattern on it as the left Windows key. Clicking on it, or pressing the key both have the same effect of popping up the menu. It defaults to listing your most used apps, along with power and settings, and a small array of tiles for things like mail, weather, and the like. You can also launch the file explorer, or view "all apps" to have it come up more like the traditional start button.

The UI itself looks very clean, modern and - dare I say - stark. I don't dislike it, but I'm not entirely sure if I am sold on it either. If you like clean, sharp lines with no shading or subtlety then you will like the UI. I appreciate that it feels like a UI that is there to serve you, and not get in your way with lots of flash.

Anyway, enough about Windows and more about chocolate. When atara and I were out shopping today, we spotted these. She was prepared to ignore them as a curiosity, but I declared that "these are relevant to my interests."

I let it be known that I was going to buy one, even if she had no interest, but it turns out she was more interested than I had thought, and she grabbed one for each of us.

They are quite good. The chocolate is definitely above average, and they packed a pleasing, but not overpowering bite. I would recommend them.