Why is My Computer So Slow?
SHA Newsletter: Vol 1. No. 14

Why Is My Computer So Slow?

I can remember when the fastest PC’s ran at 4.77 MHz – the speed of the original IBM PC. When the next generation of IBM computers appeared, the Personal System/2 line, those machines ran at a screaming 10 Mhz.

Today, a modest computer runs at 1 GHz, which is about 200 times faster than the original PC. But today’s machines don’t behave as though they are 200 times as fast. Sometimes, they are maddeningly slow. Have you ever wondered why? Here are some reasons.

Most People Run Windows
The original Microsoft Windows was little more than a shell on top of MS-DOS. It might slow down, but you could always exit from Windows and go back to the DOS prompt if you needed speed. Today, Windows is a big, complicated system. It is responsible for running the whole show on your computer, and it creates a vast array of subtle graphic effects to do it. Do your menus elegantly fade in and out? Do you see thumbnail images when you are scanning a folder full of pictures? Have you customized the way your folders look? All these niceties make using the computer easier, but they demand a lot of horsepower from your computer.

Jobs Run In the Background
On the original PC, only one program ran at a time. The PRINT.EXE program was special – it could accept documents to print and slowly dribble documents out to your printer in the background while you did other tasks. But beyond printing, only one program was active at a time.

Today’s PC’s run anywhere from 30 to 100 or more programs at once. Antivirus scanners, firewalls, program updates, and more keep the computer busy even when no one is using it.

Computers Do More and Do More For You
Twenty years ago, it was a big deal to buy a 2400-baud telephone modem and visit a bulletin-board system to send messages. Today, it’s possible to connect to the Internet continuously, moving up to a billion bits per second over your network connection. PC’s connect automatically to networks, USB “flash disks”, cameras, and audio equipment. Most times, this is done automatically so things just work the way you want. Computers play CD’s and DVD’s, record broadcast television programs, handle telephone calls and a host of tasks that were inconceivable on the first PC’s.

Most of Your Computer’s Hardware is Probably Software
Twenty years ago, the main board on your computer provided the central processor, main memory, and circuits for connections. To use a printer, you added a special circuit board with a parallel port. To use a telephone modem, you needed another circuit board with the electronics to connect to the phone line, extract the digital data from the analog signals, and send the data to your computer. To use a screen, you had another special adapter card.

Even though the computer wasn’t too fast, all this hardware gave it a lot of help. The computer could send a block of characters to the modem, for example, and tell the modem to send it out. Once that was done, the computer was free to do other work. Same deal with the screen: send data to the video adapter card, and you didn’t have to worry about how it was displayed.

Today, most of these functions are done with software programs instead of special circuit boards. Instead of waiting for a modem card to get data from your phone line, the computer’s CPU has to do most of the work of dealing with the phone signals. Displaying information on screen? Your CPU likely does that too. Printing a document? Your computer’s CPU has to figure out how to put the image of each page on the paper, then send the image data to your printer. There’s often no special hardware anymore to help out.

More than anything else, I think this shift from hardware to software is the biggest reason why modern computers aren’t, in practical terms, dramatically faster than older ones. Software drivers have always been required to make computers run, but today software drivers do more than ever before.

Where Does Software Replace Hardware?
Here are some common situations:

Video display:

In place of a dedicated display adapter, your computer will steal a chunk of main memory and handle the screen display with a special driver program. Although the computer contains a lot of RAM memory, a sizable chunk of it is never available for programs to use.

Printing:

Years ago, your computer could send a file to your printer and forget about it. The printer included a small computer inside that could interpret the file and control how the paper was marked with ink or toner. Today, your printer might depend on your computer to do this part of the job.

Network interfaces:

Integrated network interfaces, as well as some add-on network cards, rely on increasingly complex software drivers. You can thank the demands of wireless-networking schemes, encryption protocols, and management software for this.

Modems:

The electronics to handle a telephone line are relatively pricey. Many modems rely on complex signal-processing programs to do much more than what old-style telephone couplers did two decades ago.

The Mainboard:

On some modern computers, your computer’s basic input and output ports and hardware depend on special software. For practical purposes, your game ports, card readers, disk drives and other components might not exist until you load chipset drivers to make them work.

How can I tell when software has replaced hardware on my computer?

Video: If your computer is described as having “integrated video”, there’s a good chance that software has replaced portions of a dedicated video adapter. If you see references to “128MB or 256MB graphics” or brand names like ATI or Nvidia, you likely have dedicated video hardware. You’ll get better game and overall performance if you do.

Printing: Unless you buy a high-end business printer, you will probably depend on software. If your printer is advertised as being “designed for Windows” or another specific operating system, it probably needs your CPU to do much of its work in a special driver program.

Modems: If yours is described as a “Winmodem”, it’s a software-based modem and relies on your CPU for the heavy lifting. This term is often used to talk about software-based modems in general, although it properly is a trade name of U. S. Robotics. Most integrated modems are also software-based. The term “Linmodem” has been used to describe software modems for which there are Linux drivers.

Network cards: As with the others, if your card claims to support only specific operating systems, it probably depends on specific software to operate. This is especially true for wireless network cards.

Chipset drivers: It’s a fair assumption that you have chipset drivers on your new computer regardless of price.

What Does This Mean For Me?
Lower cost, for one thing. When you use a fast CPU for ordinary computing, you can afford to let the CPU do all this extra work. You can save a lot of money this way. A software-based modem might be only 1/10th the cost of a traditional hardware modem. For many of us, this is a worthwhile tradeoff.

Potentially improved reliability is another benefit. The manufacturer might be able to offer updated drivers for a printer, for example, that you can use. This can give your printer new or better features without having to make changes to the printer itself. Network cards can support new security protocols simply by loading some new software. As for the components on the mainboard, updated chipset drivers might compensate for errors –- often called “errata” -- that crop up in your computer’s circuitry. When this is the case, instead of sending your computer off for repair, a software download might fix the problem.

Software allows your computer to offer cool new features. That software-based modem can do far more than the most capable modems of twenty years ago. Displays are better, connections are faster, nearly everything you do on your computer is easier because of what we can do with software.

Dependence on software can mean less flexibility for you. The new printer you buy might not work on a computer that can’t run the needed software, even if it has the right kind of printer port. The modem on your Windows laptop, for example, might not work if you decide to try Linux.

Lower performance of your computer. The more of these extra jobs your computer takes on, the slower it runs the programs you care about. For word processing and most Web surfing, this might not matter. But if you play games, perform computer-aided design, or do lots of calculations, it matters a lot.

Backups are even more important. The move from hardware to software means that your computer depends on many programs you might not realize are there. If you need to replace a hard drive and you don’t have a complete backup, you might not be able to restore your system to health without a lot of extra work identifying and obtaining these programs.

Please note: Any trademarks and trade names of others mentioned in this message are the property of their owners, and not Stoney Hill Associates, LLC. We respect the intellectual property of others. The information provided is believed to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee that the procedures and information given here will work correctly for your specific situation.

If you would like help with a computer or software problem you face, contact us. Send an email to request@stoneyhillassociates.com.

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