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Post by Alvamiga on Apr 11, 2013 20:20:14 GMT
I have finally managed to pin down what has been causing my computer to run badly and it turns out it is a tiny scrolling message in the corner of the BBC Radio website telling you what programme is currently on. It can manage to use about 70% of my 1.25MHz computer's capabilities and even my work machine that has two 2.2GHz cores even uses about 30% of its processing power on it. All this wasted processing causes my work machine to use about 20W more electricity for nothing useful and my Mac cranks up the cooling fans to cope with the extra heat generated. I dread to think how much power is wasted on a global scale on such fluff!  Poor planet!  |
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Post by tangent on Apr 11, 2013 21:24:32 GMT
That's incredibly bad. How can a tiny scrolling message take so much processing power? Have you told the BBC?
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Post by Alvamiga on Apr 12, 2013 7:51:47 GMT
I genuinely don't know. Having been a programmer for so long I cannot comprehend how badly implemented these things are and the amount of memory and processing power even the most simple things require these days. I have told them, but am not holding my breath for them to do anything positive about it. These people tend to be from the "get a new, faster computer" or "if it doesn't stop it working, it's not worth the effort" pool of thinking. Sadly, this kind of waste is ignored by most people and ultimately shortens battery lives and increases the electricity use and cost of running things. People often complain to me that their computer is getting slower, but the thing to remember is that it is running exactly as fast as it was the day it was bought and all that has happened is that the software is getting slower and heavier. I have now created an AdBlock rule to kill it, so my computer continues to work usably.  |
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Post by Shake on Apr 16, 2013 0:30:17 GMT
I have now created an AdBlock rule to kill it, so my computer continues to work usably. I was going to suggest AdBlock, but it seems you're on top of things already. Though I do find it interesting to note that AdBlock can help me save electricity! |
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Post by Alvamiga on Apr 16, 2013 7:38:28 GMT
Without AdBlock, my computer would be thrashing to run at 100%, all the time due to animated adverts and hidden scripts in web pages. When idle, it now runs at about 30-40%. My machine at work runs Xubuntu (which I am currently switching my PC systems to at home) and uses only a few percent of the CPU power and only needs a couple of hundred megabytes of RAM to load up and be logged in. My laptop runs the 2012 version of Xubuntu, yet XP is next to unusable on it. Anything newer of Microsoft's wouldn't even install!
The Windows 7 machines in our office are using about 700MB just to start up and never get near idle unless you kill all the visual effects that are so wasteful. People seem to have forgotten that the more work these things do, the more power they consume. When they get so bogged down in needless complexity they buy a newer, more power consuming device. Computers are more efficient now, but still use more power because the gains from the improvements are squandered on visual effects and so on. The perception is that computers slow down as they get older. The reality is that every component works at precisely the same speed at the day it did when it was bought and that the software has slowed down.
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Post by Alvamiga on Apr 16, 2013 7:39:20 GMT
Hah! I seem to have made that last point already. I get so exasperated explaining it to people that I forget where and when I've said it!  |
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Post by juju on Apr 16, 2013 11:14:00 GMT
oh oh I need to know how to get rid of things that slow computers down! (in non techie terms I can understand, please  ). My computers are so sloooow, and have the fans on all the time. Adblock - where do I get that? Does it work for Mac? I have an ancient emachines laptop and a Mac OS 10.5. How can I tell what's running? I know my teenage son could probably tell me all this but I would need a tranquilliser gun to get him to sit with me for five minutes these days, sigh... Any help muchly appreciated. |
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Post by Mari on Apr 16, 2013 14:00:06 GMT
AdBlock is an add-on for Firefox
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Post by Kye on Apr 16, 2013 15:07:43 GMT
I have it on Chrome also.
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Post by Mari on Apr 16, 2013 15:50:03 GMT
Perhaps it is also for Internet Explorer then. You can download it, Juju, but explaining how and where is going to be gibberish if I do it. Any takers?
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Post by tangent on Apr 16, 2013 16:01:18 GMT
I have Adblock on Firefox but I've never tried in on IE.
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Post by Alvamiga on Apr 16, 2013 18:42:30 GMT
I use adblock on Firefox, Safari and Seamonkey. The most powerful things you can do with it involve understanding how web pages are built, but it does a pretty good job straight out the box. With a bit of fiddling, you can do things such as block the drivel feed down the right-hand-side of the Daily Mail website. On my laptop, the speed at which it loads without all those extra images and so on is significantly faster.
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). My computers are so sloooow, and have the fans on all the time. 
