Benchmarks
So I was finally able to get my new computer yesterday and began what could be a long, arduous task of migrating my data from the old machine, as well as installing all the programs we’ve come to know and love over the years. This is a somewhat repetitive process, on both machines, and I started to notice some pretty big differences.
For example when transferring 400mb files from my old computer to my jump drive it would take about 5-8 minutes. This is an ATA drive and a USB 1.1 port. On the new computer along with it’s multitude of other upgrades like 2 processors running at a faster speed and more RAM all running at a faster speed, the SATA drives and USB 2.0 port moved the same data in 15-25 seconds.
Think about it, from 8 minutes to just 25 seconds. I STILL haven’t burnt up the time I saved doing that just once in writing this entire blog entry.
This is the most fundamental speed up I’ve ever encountered in an upgrade. The closest analogy was when I went from a 4X CD-ROM to a 16X or a 16X to a 48X way back in the day, and even that doesn’t really seem to come close since I didn’t really use the CD-ROM that much.
I also took Firefox for a spin, PC World’s benchmarks showed it to be far faster than IE and they were right – if anything they undersold it’s speed. It opens as fast as, if not faster than, Notepad for God’s sake. Granted it’s running on my new faster machine but even compared to the latest IE on my new computer Firefox runs circles around it.
This is just speed increase built upon speed increase a dozen times over and after getting almost all my programs (applications, not games) and a bunch of my personal files (but no music or video) moved over we still have well over 200gb free. This of course is due as much to us going through our files over the last couple weeks and clearing out the crap as the modest 50gb space increase on the new drive but nevertheless I’m pretty excited.
So yes, maybe we didn’t strictly speaking need this upgrade at this specific time but when you’re trying to do something on the computer when the kid is pulling at your pant leg and wanting some much deserved attention, turning 8 minutes of computer nonsense into 25 seconds is a big win. It could easily make the difference between a happy baby and a crying tantrum.
Now we just need to upgrade the kid with more patience.
And a GPS transponder.
