The Importance of Speed

I remember powering up the Radio Shack TRS-80 in Lakeside Middle School's computer lab. It was 1983 and our 7th grade class was pretty excited about tinkering around with this donated equipment. We weren't quite sure what we were supposed to do with it - but we were excited nonetheless.

For many of us, it was our first hands on experience with a computer. In checking the TRS-80 hardware specs on Wikipedia today, my first experience was likely powered by a 1.77 MHz processor and 4 KB of RAM. Compared to machine specs today - think Model T Ford vs. Porsche Turbo. Had I been asked about my first user experience, I would've commented on the programming language or the TRS-80's all-in-one box design. I wouldn't have said anything about its speed. I had nothing to compare it to, no expectations - and therefore no letdown.

That Christmas my parents surprised my older brother an me with an Apple IIe. What a step up from the TRS-80. It looked cooler, did more, and was FASTER. Like clockwork, over the next 25 years hardware and software manufacturers brought to market faster and more capable products. What was considered fast one year would be considered frustratingly slow the next. In experiencing these improvement cycles, our expectations were forever changed. Even the little TRS-80 fell victim to changing perceptions and it became lovingly referred to as the 'Trash-80'.

The introduction of Web-based solutions introduced another element into expectation/satisfaction formula - the ability to better access and share information. For some individuals and businesses the value of tracking and sharing information in new ways trumped the convenience of quickly accessing and changing data. As witnessed in numerous global enterprise deployments of web-based solutions, good performance reigned supreme in the eyes of the users. Citrix built a billion dollar business around satisfying people's need for speed. Akamai and other players are now doing the same for websites and web applications.

With user expectations and the number of viable software options in the marketplace at a seemingly all time high, why would Microsoft, the world's software juggernaut, release a suite of products that jeopardize what users value so greatly - speed. While Vista, Outlook 2007, and Office 2007 have some incredible features, my user satisfaction is clouded by their relative inability to perform. Unlike years past, I have more than just Microsoft's previous version as a reference point. I compare Outlook 2007 to both Outlook 2003 and what I use on the personal front - Gmail. To 'prepare' for my upgrade to Outlook 2007, I went out and bought a dual-core laptop with loads of memory. The result was not favorable - it now takes me longer to open and send e-mail, access public folders, and worst of all - search through my sent items. I am getting really tired of seeing this screen....

Google hasn't done Microsoft any favors in convincing me that Outlook 2007 is a winner. When I search my 1,000's of gmail sent or archived items, the results appear in less than a second. Forget Google handing it to Microsoft on the search and advertising fronts, they are punishing them on the speed front. Unfortunately the Microsoft speed issues are not limited to Outlook. In upgrading our machines to MS Office 2007, we experience noticeable delays when using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Excel 2007 touts support for 1 million rows. Too bad that when a I load an Excel file with only 300,000 rows that my high-powered laptop is rendered useless. (And no, I don't find it acceptable to have to shut every other application that I have running to make this possible.)

Will Microsoft's focus on more features and apparent de-prioritization of performance cost them? Tough to say, but Smartsheet is likely not the only business considering online alternatives for corporate e-mail and is not upgrading to Vista in the foreseeable future. One thing I do have to thank Microsoft for is bringing to the fore something that I had taken a bit for granted over the past few years - you can't rely too much on hardware and network improvements to deliver a fast user experience. Speed and access to information must be prioritized like any other major feature and engineered into to product. It's one of the reasons our Haymaker release will achieve a balance between useful features and an 80%+ improvement over the today's performance levels.

Mark, CEO