Here’s an unfortunate trend in the world of computers: As hardware gets faster, software gets slower. This relationship is not proportionally equal either. As fast as new desktop hardware is today, it cannot compensate for the slow, ill-designed software systems that will run the show. Bloated Software aka Bloatware is more prominent today than ever before.

I mean, it makes sense that software will continue to utilize the potential of the break-neck hardware speeds of the day. Software packages will continue to grow in size, memory usage, and clock-cycle consumption. However, there must be limits on the increased need for computing power. Why push the software beyond the technology of current hardware? Poor programming practices are the culprit in many cases. Too many Software Engineers are trying to do it all, rather than keep it small, simple and effective.

Billions of dollars are wasted each year when companies and home users must throw away perfectly good hardware, just so that they can buy faster computers which will run the latest “must have” operating system of the day. Is this necessary? Not by a long shot. Microsoft however makes billions of dollars by convincing people that it is in fact necessary. At the end of the day, it’s all about dollars and cents. The worst part about this whole situation is that people expect their “new” computer to be much faster than the old one. Sadly, this is not usually the case. As stated, software is getting slower at a rate greater than which hardware is increasing in speed. What does this boil down to? A value computer bought in the mid 1990’s running Windows 95 runs proportionally FASTER than a value computer bought today running Windows Vista. WOW!

Bloated software has proven to be a trend over the years, but has never seen days as bad as these. Some software applications such as Norton Antivirus slow computers down to a crawl; very frustrating for the end user. How can one expect to have an enjoyable experience from their PC when it operates at turtle speed? (Correction, the SOFTWARE operates at turtle speed. The hardware itself is easily capable of landing a spacecraft on the moon). And I’m not kidding about the moon landing thing. In fact, the computers they used on Apollo 11 had a FRACTION of the power contained within your basic cell phone. No kidding!

So next time your computer crawls to a halt, don’t kick the tower! 9 times out of 10, its not your hardware but rather your software which is the culprit. It’s like dieting. Not only do you need to eat the RIGHT things, but you have to eat them in MODERATION. As such, computers work well with the RIGHT programs, and don’t like having to run 25 unnecessary processes during bootup. There can be no hidden reasons behind the slow performance of your machine, whether your suspect it to be viruses or hackers. The problem may simply be lying in your operating system and applications of choice. Do your homework: There are many software solutions that utilize lightweight frameworks, and small footprints. In other words, choose programs that do not exploit and abuse your poor hardware. Bloated software is a real problem, and could be causing you slow-dows right now!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Advanced. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.