20 years ago starting the PC was a test of patience: this was to start an old computer

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By Jack Ferson

Today you can turn on the computer, write your password and get to work in seconds. A few years ago, it wasn’t as fast as you thinkIt was enough to press the ignition button to start a long waiting chain that could lengthen five, six or even more minutes.

If now it bothers you that the team late 15 seconds to react, it is because you have forgotten what it meant using a Domestic PC in the early 2000s. For years, starting the team was a task that demanded time and patiencebut because technology has advanced so much we no longer realize.

But if you lived that time, you will remember what it was to wait in front of a black screen, see BIOS messages parade and pray so that the operating system does not give errors. The experience was frustrating, although at that time it didn’t seem so, we simply knew anything else.

Lighting a PC used to be synonymous with patience and wait

The routine was known by many users that was to press the button, see the initial screen of the manufacturer, then the system’s check, the loading of the operating system and, hopefully, the complete desk after several minutes.

Even if the team was new, even if it had the best of the best for its time, That was normal. There were no SSD records, RAM was limited and processors, although useful, were fair for basic tasks.

Then the second phase arrived, where the desk was shown, but everything was still ready. Antivirus processes, sound controllers, printer software or the Internet connection manager continued to load in the background.

If you wanted to open a folder, the system took so long that you came to think that it had hung. Opening a browser was like starting a video editing program today, so everything felt slow, heavy and little fluid.

Of course, this situation was part of the routine in those years, since restarting was the last option, because you knew that it meant starting over from zero with another round of lost minutes.

It should be noted that today you can restart the PC without thinking, without interrupting your work, and in less than it takes for a song in Sonar you are back. That time was not worse due to whim, but was the reflection of a technology still in development.

Downloads, another torture that today sounds ridiculous

In the same way, Download a program or game was an adventure. If the file occupied 1 GB, it was normal to leave the computer on at night. If they were more GB, you better assumed that you would have the PC working all week. In addition, it was not uncommon for the connection to fall in the middle of the process, then, to start over.

All this in computers with HDD hard drives of 128 GB or more, where each file counted, since space management was almost a strategic task. You eliminated programs, movements to disks or CD, you juggled to install something new, and the result was not always expected.

Today, with a decent connection and rapid storage, you install anything in minutesmany times without moving from the cloud. Seeing progress in seconds has made us forget what it was to expect without guarantees, so much has changed since that time of the Windows XP versions or even before.

Having several programs working at the same time was not usual, and not because you did not want, but because the computer did not give more. Two apps open at the same time could slow the entire system. Opening an Excel sheet while you had the browser on could be a fatal error. The system froze, or directly launched an error warning. You had to choose: or you were navigated or worked.

Windows 7

Today you can have dozens of eyelashes, a video call in the background, a text editor, Spotify, a task manager and several synchronized services at the same time without the system being barely immute. Multitary is no longer a function, but it is a default condition.

Also operating systems have changed radically. Windows XP or Vista needed time, reset and constant attention. Windows 10 or 11 are updated alone, they restart quickly, repair background errors and almost never force you to interrupt your work.

If you ever feel that your computer takes to start, remember what it was to turn on a PC in 2003. It gave you time to prepare coffee, plan the morning and still kept seeing how the system finished loading. Today, computer science has reached an efficiency level that seemed impossible two decades ago.

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