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Scott Lurndal

writes:
On Mon, 31 Mar 2014 09:45:51 -0400, "Mayayana"

Both the Win7 dual CPU box and my new XP box, with
"mediocre" AMD A6 2-core, respond instantly. I keep them
clean. If you find you need a high-power machine for
speed to do things less intensive than video editing then
you probably have a lot of crap weighing down the system...
And you've probably been reading too many mainstream
media articles written by tech journalists who depend on
hardware and software companies for ad dollars. The world
of tech survives on a dizzying pace of forced obsolescence,
so if you go by what the media tells you you'll end up
replacing gadgets as fast as you buy them.

Computers of that age have another common failure mode that slows them
to a crawl - leaky caps.

Can you clarify how a leaky cap will "slow them to a crawl"?

If the PLL controlling the clock signal doesn't lock at the
target frequency, the processor will never leave reset. I suppose
that qualifies as "slow", for some value of "slow".