two things makes computers slow more than anything else

Computers from years ago were slow for a number of reasons. Slow seek time on the hard drive, low amount of RAM, an operating system choked with a bunch of bloatware, and so on.

Today, computers are only slow for only two reasons.

First, the internet itself.

With anything internet-based, you wait while things load from a remote server. I don't think people really appreciate how much waiting there actually is to do anything online.

And it doesn't help that so many programs are "required" to connect to the internet by design. This means that no matter what, any program that connects to the internet means you wait. A lot.

Second, the web browser.

A web browser these days is like running an entire operating system in your operating system. The level of crap a browser loads both locally and online is insane, and all the crap a browser does in the background is also insane.

Want to see your computer run fast? Use programs that don't connect to the internet at all. With the exception of super chunky stuff like editing giant photos and/or videos, everything is quick.

My phone, which is "old", probably has 100x the computing power compared to the my first PC with Windows (version 3.1, thank you very much) did. But try to do anything online and sloooowwwww.

The primary browser on my phone is DuckDuckGo. Yes, they have a mobile browser. The reason I run it is because it blocks a lot of crap and connects to the least amount of stuff while still delivering a modern mobile browser experience...

...but it's still slow. Fault of the browser? No. Fault of my connection speed? No. It's the fault of the internet.

Since my site doesn't load any needless crap, oh yeah, loads super fast on anything, including the phone. My site isn't on any high-tier super fast ultra business class server or anything like that. It loads fast because it's crap-free. How I wish other web sites were like that.

Try and load a banking web site (especially one that's for a credit card) on your phone in the browser and you'll feel like you're on dialup internet all over again, if you're old enough to remember that experience. Using DuckDuckGo will make the experience slightly better, but that browser can't fix a web site that's a slow-loading pig.

Or better yet, try loading any popular social media site in the browser. Stuttering, pausing, jumpy pages, and ridiculous amounts of background crap happen when all you want to do is send a message, view a photo or watch a video.

This is 2026 internet? Seriously?

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