Comment by DrBazza

Comment by DrBazza 4 days ago

30 replies

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> Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all.

There's a guy that has written their own version of explorer that's so fast in comparison to the built-in, that you'd think they were cheating somehow because of everyone's experience with explorer.

And someone has written an IDE for C++ that opens while Visual Studio is on its splash screen.

And another that has written a debugger with the same performance.

And a video doing the rounds of Word ('97?) on spinning rust opening in just under 2 seconds.

Basically, everything MS is doing is degrading performance. Opportunities for regular devs to go back to performant software, and MS is unlikely to fix theirs in the foreseeable future.

benhurmarcel 4 days ago

> version of explorer that's so fast

https://filepilot.tech/

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  • ZeWaka 4 days ago

    $250 for a version with updates past a year? yikes

    Reply View 15 replies
    • skrebbel 4 days ago

      For a lifetime license incl updates forever that seems quite reasonable to me. It's a bit over a year of Netflix.

      In fact, given that it includes perpetual priority support (within a business day!) I expect the author's gonna change that soon, once he gets one of those infinitely demanding customers and realizes what a terrible mistake he made (inf support for a one-time payment, oops!). So better bite while it's hot!

      The €40 option for one year of updates is a lot more economical and is still a perpetual license for the software itself.

      Reply View 11 replies
      • Gracana 4 days ago

        Now I'm shocked by the cost of Netflix.

        Reply View 2 replies
      • fleshmonad 4 days ago

        Imagine paying for a file browser. This is why windows will always win. They have the most docile userbase ever. They'd rather pay 250 bucks for a file picker than to change OS.

        Reply View 7 replies
    • g8oz 4 days ago

      Double Commander is open source and no cost.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • b00ty4breakfast 4 days ago

      some folks about to make a decent amount of money if the trend wrt win11 continues

      Reply View 0 replies
    • donkeylazy456 4 days ago

      > $250 for a version with updates past a year? yikes It cannot handle CJK encodings too. what a joke

      Reply View 0 replies
  • iJohnDoe 4 days ago

    I've tried this a few times. Windows 10. Downloaded the 2MB file, double-clicked on it, and nothing happens. Same thing when I tried it a few months again. Put it in a command prompt and no output of an error.

    I'm starting to worry I just launched something malicious.

    Reply View 2 replies
    • direwolf20 4 days ago

      The latter is normal on windows. Executables have a header flag which specifies they either use the terminal or not. If a terminal program is opened from outside a terminal, it opens a terminal window. If a nonterminal program is opened from a terminal, it instantly detaches.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • smusamashah 4 days ago

      After downloading, did you open its properties and "unblock" it?

      Reply View 0 replies
AuthAuth 4 days ago

The problem is on windows you're competing directly against the guys who own the operating system. So even when there is a gap for a better file manager the one that microsoft makes is so entrenched and microsoft can make sure they always win. It sucks.

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  • deaddodo 4 days ago

    That was the argument used for IE/Edge. But eventually it got so terrible that the first thing everyone does now is install Chrome/Firefox/Brave.

    They obviously have an advantage, but it’s not insurmountable to being garbage.

    Reply View 1 reply
    • zem 3 days ago

      hilariously, the last time I had a new windows machine and opened up edge to download firefox I got some sort of message about giving edge a proper try first.

      Reply View 0 replies
hn_acc1 4 days ago

I found chrome was putting itself into "eco mode" on my Lenovo (work) laptop all of a sudden. Meant that waking up took FOREVER, and accessing a web page (required as part of a daily login) took 15+ seconds to load when first logging in, as opposed to a few seconds, which caused our password app to timeout at times, etc. Who the heck comes up with these ideas? "Eco mode" by default? And no way to disable it easily? I had to add an obscure switch to the chrome startup to make it run normally again.

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  • bobbob1921 3 days ago

    On newer laptops, and I’ve seen this specifically on thinkpads) if the power supply you are using is not the correct wattage, the system will throttle down significantly. I started noticing this by looking at windows task manager and noticing the CPU would not scale above 0.8 GHz. Not sure if Chrome responds in the same way, but it’s worth looking into. Fix was easy, just get a proper wattage power supply (i went with oem)

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vee-kay 4 days ago

A similar example: Microsoft's Windows Search function is so pathetic and slow, yet there's another little company who gives a blazing fast file search tool, that's available as (portable) freeware since 15+ years.

Everything Search: https://www.voidtools.com/

Everything Search uses the NTFS indexes to do blazing fast file or folder searches. It has a neat and clean interface, and no nagging ads (unlike.. cough, cough.. Windows 11). Everything Search is one of the first tools I install on any new Windows PC.

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  • bobbob1921 3 days ago

    Amazing, perfect app! I use it frequently, and I love the response I get from customers or friends whom I turn onto it (or install it for). I also encourage others to donate to this developer. The sad thing is casual users would not even think of donating as they assume this type of feature should be (properly) built into the OS; so I’ve made sure to donate on behalf of users I’ve turned on to Everything. Great app!

    Reply View 1 reply
    • vee-kay 3 days ago

      I was overjoyed when I saw that Microsoft had bought out the small Winternals team (Winternals Software LP, founded by Cogswell and Russinovich, who exposed the 2005 Sony BMG CD copy-protection DRM) that gave awesome freeware "power tools" to tweak and monitor MS-Windows. Microsoft renamed it as SysInternals, and Microsoft has since maintained it well and still kept it all free.

      https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

      Fun trivia: Mark Russinovich went on to greater heights, and he's CTO of Microsoft Azure.

      I wish Microsoft would do the same for another amazing freeware "power tools" suite: Nirsoft Utilities. https://www.nirsoft.net/

      I really don't know how Voidtools has survived all these years, by giving away their primary product (Everything Search) for free.

      https://www.voidtools.com/

      Everything Search is free, powerful and fast, and thankfully, unlike some other famous tools (CCleaner), it is not adware, spyware or malware. The only caveat, is that Everything Search's background indexing of drives requires administrative access, but user can run it without admin access, it's just that it would need to manually reindex (to add latest files/folders to its index database) on every run then.

      https://www.voidtools.com/faq/

      For years, I have wished that Microsoft would acquire Voidtools (give them a good chunk of money for all the years of service they gave to the world in the form of this awesome freeware Everything Search), and integrated it into Microsoft Windows Search (to make it a rival to MacOS's Spotlight search) to make it blazing fast and finally useful.

      (Remember, Microsoft acquired Skype and integrated its capabilities into MS Teams, which is available free for personal use, with some limitations (60mins session limit, 100 participants).)

      Reply View 0 replies
mjevans 4 days ago

It was VERY common in the spinning rust era to already open (office, etc) applications in the background. I think the launch operation only allocated window resources and finished the job; all the hit the disk work was already precached in memory while the OS was doing the slow computer starting up / logging into the network steps and the user was off getting a coffee or something.

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