Can't this thing go any faster?

Among some much more modern machines, I'm still using a 2002 Powermac Quicksilver Dual 1Ghz G4. The rationale for this is best left as a subject of a different discussion, though the argument pretty quickly boils down to the fact that it works. Most major technological developments in personal computing space have been in the direction of web-based tools, gaming, and portable devices. If you are not doing heavy duty calculations or writing large programs, almost any amount of CPU power will do. It's become a commodity. (Now if internet bandwidth would do the same...)

The proliferation of web-based tools and portable devices has actually helped some things get more usable on older hardware. A lot more code is multi-threaded, and the limited processing power of smartphones has made fast code important again. The universal natural of web-based content also means that websites need to work on a range of devices. I'm finding few pages that don't load well or choke up the browser. Remarkably, browsing the web has actually gotten to be a better experience on the old machine over the past few years.

That said, the G4 is still not snappy fast for a lot of things (though, the indomitable performance of Xee and Shoebox keep it alive).

So, like with photo editing programs, I've gotten a bit picky with browsers, always looking for one that works faster. When the G4 was new, that was IE 5.2, then the mozilla/firefox fork Camino, and then recently, Tenfourfox.

For a long time, using Camino was a tradeoff. Safari came along, and generally ran faster, but had some clunky (to me!) UI issues, and tended to render some pages funny and crash for reasons unknown. I didn't really every consider Opera, because the difference in performance never felt that big. I thought Camino would be the end of the line, as the retirement of Gecko, combined with the sunsetting of OS X 10.4 and 10.5, would eventually relegate the G4 to obsolescence.

Enter TenFourFox. Not just new Firefox fork, but a veritable paradigm shift. Not only do the creators want a modern powerpc, OS X 10.4 compatible browser, they want one that runs like the wind. Extensive code optimization and tuning have done wonders for the browser: javascript heavy sites actually work on my G4. (If you're using one of these old machines, lemme give you some examples that will blow your socks off: I'm writing this blog post directly in Blogger, not copying and pasting. Google doesn't complain my browser is out of date! I can use Facebook! Huffingtonpost can be loaded and scrolled through!) I am not completely certain, but I think this single program has probably kept me from replacing the computer. Waiting a bit for science code to run and files to copy is one thing. Waiting to -read- a webpage while it the browser loads is another. Having webpages be useless is fairly damning to the functionality of a computer in the modern era. The browser program gets used a lot.

How much faster?
I ran some benchmarks this morning while sucking coffee through my Cheerios, using the collection of browsers I have laying round and sunspider.
TFF7450 10.0.10: 2,259.1 ms
Safari 4.1.3: 8,731.5 ms
Camino 2.0.9:  13,350.3 ms
IE5.2 : ∞ (wouldn't run)


Now for some comparisons,
1 ghz Tegra 2 Android 2.3.1 : 2,049 ms usng Firefox 17 beta
 1 ghz Tegra 2 Android 2.3.1 : 2,162 ms usng Chrome
Sony VGN-P698E Atom Z530 @ 1.6 ghz 1191 ms using Firefox 16
Thinkpad x120e 1.6 ghz AMD E-350 scores 600 ms using Firefox 16
Thinkpad z60m 2.0 ghz Pentium M scores 399.2 ms using Firefox 16
A 2.8 ghz Core i7 980 scores 220 ms using Chrome 22
iPod Touch 3G (iOS 5/Safari): 4585 ms
iPod Touch 5g (iOS 6.1/Safari):1815 ms
MBP Core i7 2640M 2.8 ghz (OS X 10.7): 199 ms using Firefox 16
MBP Core i7 2640M 2.8 ghz (OS X 10.7): 180 ms using Safari


If you really want Javascript speed, you'll still need a new computer... A high end netbook is 4 times faster...

However, the Tenfourfox puts the G4 in a class that's at least usable. IE 8 on the same Core i7 yields 3757.1 ms. Nice code a slow machine can be much faster than bad code on a fast machine.