BLOAT!

petersmart

petersmart

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It seems the larger and faster our computers get so the level of bloat on programs increases.

This is most noticeable to me because I'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to programs etc.

Recently I came across 3 old programs which still run either in XP or Win 7 and really shows this up:

Adobe Acrobat 4 - size approx 7MB as opposed to about 125MB nowadays

IMGVIEW2 a simple image viewer about 600K

DVDDecrypter about 780K

And just look at the way anti virus programs have grown and grown trying to be all things to all malware.

EDIT: OOPS meant to post this in Computers so mods feel free to relocate if necessary.
 
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I think it also got something to do with the way the software utilising the x64 architecture and the windows OS. Those programs while small probably arent very efficient. But then again they don't use up much ram or CPU time.
 
Memory (RAM and disk) is cheap these days, no real need to expend effort making things small. Applications are expected to have a lot more connectivity and features than back in the day.

Don't know what AV you use but NOD32 has zero noticable impact on my system.
 
Irfanview is still a couple of Mb, still a fully functional and effective program running on W8.1.
 
It doesn't really affect me either but my sister was loaned an old laptop about 12 years old with limited resources and it virtually seized up when a few modern programs were loaded on it like Acrobat and Chrome and Microsoft Word.

Just made me think that maybe these days people were almost forced to upgrade as the programs they run get bigger and bigger.
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12 years old is when computing was pretty much steam powered by comparison: 2002, so Windows XP was newly arrived, we were using single core processors running at a few hundred MHz and if you were lucky you would have 256Mb of RAM and a 3D graphics card. It's not really surprising that it couldn't hack any of those applications.

Part of it is the overhead that many operating systems put on the computer. I have an 8-9 YO Twinhead H12Y laptop at home that was taking literally 10min to boot to the vista desktop, and the cursor struggled to follow the trackpad - to open a program you'd double-tap & wait to see if it worked. I tried several version of Linux on it, and while they were all better than Windows (except, curiously, when it came to DVD playback, where Windows was completely fine but some Linux versions struggled). There were a couple that weren't really laggy at all, and I could run office and music apps without any delay, but they were designed specifically to have lightweight desktop environments, rather than being feature-rich with a large processor overhead.

But modern apps on an ancient computer - forget it.
 
I see the same trends on android. Most apps used to be hundreds of kb, now we see plenty over 10MB download size. It must be all the advertisements, trackers and NSA goodies that we can't do without.
 
neil_g said:
avast is using a whopping 28Mb RAM here. its having a huge impact on my system..
Click to expand...
I have avast Premier (top package on Win 8.1)

Avast Antivirus =3.6mb
Avast Firewall =1.8mb
Avast Service =16.1mb
 
It almost seems to fit a conspiracy theory at times - one to get us to spend more money. Hardware and software leapfrog each other.

Quark Xpress 5 is a leanly efficient and high-end functional program for page layout / book design, but won't run on recent OS's. I can't afford to upgrade. The film scanner I paid over a grand for not THAT long ago, won't work either, since it needs a now antiquated SCSI connection.

Overall, you adapt and move on as best you can ...
 
I don't see the problem. Memory is cheap, storage is cheap, and we have multicore processors that are exponentially faster per clock cycle.

Back in the mid 90s your average PC was a single core, highly inefficient processor running at perhaps 100MHz.. most had around 16MB of RAM, and perhaps 500MB of disk space. In 2005, your average PC may have radically higher clock speeds, but even then they were singe core, and highly inefficient.. Anyone remember the Prescott Pentium 4s?? While running at clock speeds now measured in GHz... they were SLOW.... and HOT... You still only had around 1GB of RAM, and perhaps a 200GB hard disk.

We now have 4 cores as average, and much more efficiency with Ivy bridge and Haswell CPUs... 16GB RAM is now average, and storage is measures in terrabytes.

I've not even mentioned the exponential leap in GPUs.

Why would anyone be worrying about having a programme that is 250MB as opposed to 7MB any more?
 
Pookeyhead said:
I don't see the problem.
Click to expand...

It wasn't a problem really just an observation but I do wonder how many millions of PCs have been discarded simply because they couldn't cope with modern programs, as per my sister.
 
petersmart said:
It wasn't a problem really just an observation but I do wonder how many millions of PCs have been discarded simply because they couldn't cope with modern programs, as per my sister.
Click to expand...
Can your sister not cope with modern programs then? :D
 
Pointless thread really. Life progresses.
 
Elite running on a BBC model B in 1984
jFXXu2W.jpg


Elite running on a mid level PC in 2014
KP3LFzb.png


That's why things get bigger.. It's a GOOD thing.. not bad.
 
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Just looked at Elite....my poor laptop won't run it . Not enough Mhz or good enough graphics card.
 
I'm reasonably convinced that when people say "bloat", for the most part, they don't actually have a clear idea of what this even means.
 
This thread was not what I was expecting.

I was expecting complains about OEM software on new systems.


TBH a 14 year old laptop that is still running is an achievement in itself. I'd install Chrome OS or a light weight Linux and a lightweight browser.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Elite running on a BBC model B in 1984
Click to expand...
The original Elite on the BBC B was a masterpiece of efficient coding, both in terms of memory use in fitting the game and the screen image into the 32 kilobytes of RAM of the BBC and in execution speed. Although the image you posted is not from a BBC B, because the developers impelented a split mode screen with high res two colour (white and black) top 3/4 of the display for the view of space and the bottom 1/4 was lower res and four colour for the instrumentation. They switched the Motorola 6845 between the video modes part way through each frame being drawn (so they had to know when a certain line had been reached by the CRTC and interrupt whatever they were doing to force the video mode switch) , something that Acorn never intended (and I doubt Motorola did either).

And yes, I disassembled the whole of the Elite executable, went though it and understood what it was doing in various places, commented it, patched it to remove the copy protection from the floppy disk based version so it could be copied just by copying the files from one disk to another etc. etc. all this while I was supposed to be studying for my 'A' levels :p .
 
When ah were a lad, I saved up my paper round money and bought Elite on tape for my BBC B. Fourteen quid was a tidy sum in those days.

I subsequently bought it again on disc (the Superior Software re-issue) and again when it was released for the Acorn Archimedes, which to this day I think is the best version ever.

That said, I'm going to buy the hell out of Elite: Dangerous when it's released. Might even get a joystick! :geek:
 
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wuyanxu said:
This thread was not what I was expecting.

I was expecting complains about OEM software on new systems.


TBH a 14 year old laptop that is still running is an achievement in itself. I'd install Chrome OS or a light weight Linux and a lightweight browser.
Click to expand...

In fact I had to uninstall Chrome because when it was opened it virtually froze the laptop - and install Linux - yeah that'll really make my sister's day :D
 
pwhysall said:
When ah were a lad, I saved up my paper round money and bought Elite on tape for my BBC B. Fourteen quid was a tidy sum in those days.

I subsequently bought it again on disc (the Superior Software re-issue) and again when it was released for the Acorn Archimedes, which to this day I think is the best version ever.

That said, I'm going to buy the hell out of Elite: Dangerous when it's released. Might even get a joystick! :geek:
Click to expand...

Do it, I splurged on a stick and throttle setup and it's really an amazingly involving experience. Enjoyed playing beta but waiting for release now.
 
pwhysall said:
When ah were a lad, I saved up my paper round money and bought Elite on tape for my BBC B. Fourteen quid was a tidy sum in those days.

I subsequently bought it again on disc (the Superior Software re-issue) and again when it was released for the Acorn Archimedes, which to this day I think is the best version ever.

That said, I'm going to buy the hell out of Elite: Dangerous when it's released. Might even get a joystick! :geek:
Click to expand...
I bought it on tape and again on disk (original release). Don't remember if I bought it for my Arc (I had one of the first batch of A310s), but did buy the the two bug-ridden PC based sequels and played them to the point where the bugs made further progress impossible.

I'll wait for the official release of Dangerous.
 
petersmart said:
In fact I had to uninstall Chrome because when it was opened it virtually froze the laptop - and install Linux - yeah that'll really make my sister's day :D
Click to expand...

She'd probably be completely fine - the bad old days have long gone, and you'd be hard pressed to know it was an OS put together by hobbyists.
 
ancient_mariner said:
She'd probably be completely fine - the bad old days have long gone, and you'd be hard pressed to know it was an OS put together by hobbyists.
Click to expand...

Well I've tried various distros and have given up on them so she'd have no chance!
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petersmart said:
Well I've tried various distros and have given up on them so she'd have no chance!
.
Click to expand...

I tried 3 of the Linux mint versions on an old machine.

Only one of them loaded but that one was pretty professional and very fast, so must agree with Toni.
 
I still have my first pc, with photoshop 6.0, still works fine with 128mb ram, now you need a gazillion mb ram and an 84 core processor to run it ( I might be exaggerating just a tiny bit ok ) Yes theres more tricked out pimped up stuff but the basic photoshop hasn't really changed that much in itself, most of the everyday stuff has stayed pretty much the same.
 
I'd be fascinated to see how that orginal photoshop 6 on that machine would cope with a 20Mb raw file now. ;)

Actually I have a fairly good idea. When I first had access to a scanner in '97 or '98 it offered a theoretical 600dpi, so I scanned an 8X6 print. Attempting any kind of image manipulation required waiting a couple of min while the image was re-drawn. I'll take a modern machine over that any day, regardless of how, theoretically, an old machine can still manipulate an image. :)
 
onomatopoeia said:
The original Elite on the BBC B was a masterpiece of efficient coding, both in terms of memory use in fitting the game and the screen image into the 32 kilobytes of RAM of the BBC and in execution speed. Although the image you posted is not from a BBC B, because the developers impelented a split mode screen with high res two colour (white and black) top 3/4 of the display for the view of space and the bottom 1/4 was lower res and four colour for the instrumentation. They switched the Motorola 6845 between the video modes part way through each frame being drawn (so they had to know when a certain line had been reached by the CRTC and interrupt whatever they were doing to force the video mode switch) , something that Acorn never intended (and I doubt Motorola did either).

And yes, I disassembled the whole of the Elite executable, went though it and understood what it was doing in various places, commented it, patched it to remove the copy protection from the floppy disk based version so it could be copied just by copying the files from one disk to another etc. etc. all this while I was supposed to be studying for my 'A' levels :p .
Click to expand...


Damn your nerdage :) the two screen grabs illustrate my point though. Software takes advantage of what's available to run it. There's no need to try and fit a game into 32k of RAM, so why bother. While the new Elite.. on disk, is several GB in size, I've noticed that it only uses around 400MB of system RAM when running, and less than 1GB of VRAM. In terms of efficiency, considering the scope of the game compared to the original, I'd say it's MORE efficient. Hardly surprising when it's the same person behind the project. I'm saying it's not "bloat" at all, it's just using the resources available. If computers have more memory, more processing power and more graphics grunt available, you will take advantage of it. Of course software titles get bigger.

Should have used a screen grab of my own. Here's the original running on BeebEm.



aSwbNav.jpg


Not really much different from the other one though.
 
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