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More offensive — Resource bloat or Feature bloat?

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zridling:
Last week I ranted about High Software Prices, and in that discussion several mentioned new features as reason for higher prices, among other things. However, I think I can take the feature bloat as long as it doesn't include resource bloat. More often than not, the two go hand-in-hand. It seems more programs are loading most of the installation size right into memory anymore.

Between the two, which is worse?

Darwin:
I'm with you, Zaine, resource bloat ticks me off more than feature bloat as long as, as you note, feature bloat doesn't lead to resource bloat.

app103:
The resource bloat problem is why I fell in love with good simple single purpose tools.

Why the heck should I have wait forever for Word to load, just to sort a list in a simple .txt file alphabetically?

Or open an image in Photoshop or Paintshop Pro just to use the dropper tool to find out the RGB of some color in it?

Why does my good firewall need to have a crappy antivirus? Or my good antivirus have to have a crappy firewall?

The list goes on forever.

Yeah, ok, my taskbar looks bloated with shortcuts to all my tiny tools, but I can gladly live with that.  :D

f0dder:
Why the heck should I have wait forever for Word to load, just to sort a list in a simple .txt file alphabetically?
-app103
--- End quote ---
In my experience, word (at least the office2000 version and previous) is a blazingly fast loader - also when the "office loader" application is set not to run at system startup. I was forced back on a pmmx-200/64ram, 5400rpm IDE drive that didn't support UDMA, for a while - and that's after I had been used to a P4/2.53/512meg/7200rpm-fast-drive. Yet, word was still fast loading (although the as-you-type spell checking was a bit heavy on the CPU :) ).

I do agree that integrating a lot of functionality isn't always the best way to go... but some tools can also almost be too single-purpose-minded. Ah, achieving the golden balance...

app103:
Back when I used to actually use Word, I also had a rather heavy antivirus that slowed EVERYTHING down (speaking of bloat...cough McAfee cough). It made even Word 97 take awhile to load. By the time I scrapped it in favor of AVG, I had lost the habit of using Word and was pretty much a plain text/notepad person.

And yeah...I was stuck on a pc just like your slow one. But I was running WinME, which is also kind of bloated and slower than it should be.

Did you know that when you close an application in WinME, it takes 3-5 mins for you to regain all your system resources back? This is an intended 'feature'...just in case you decide you didn't mean to close it and want to open it again, it will load faster the 2nd time.

Baaaaaaad idea! Whoever thought that one up should be forced to use my old pc for the rest of his/her life! :down:

I do agree that integrating a lot of functionality isn't always the best way to go... but some tools can also almost be too single-purpose-minded. Ah, achieving the golden balance...
--- End quote ---

The golden balance...to have the small tools for the small jobs...and the big ones for the big jobs...and the sense to use the right ones at the right time and not be tempted to squash an ant with a steamroller or scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.

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