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0 pointsmerb3y ago0 comments

good idea on computers with 100 mhz, an encryption algorithm would've probably not slowed down anything at all, especially not because there was no encryption extension.

0 comments

wkat42423y ago

My 166Mhz Pentium MMX laptop was encrypted too, with the full disk encryption feature of network associates' PGP Desktop. It could handle it fine even without AES-NI. Slower computers also had slower disk access so the burden wasn't big.

I think there was just less focus on security back in those days. We used the same password everywhere, left thumb drives in taxis, used telnet instead of SSH and regular http.

mtrower3y ago

Wat.

My 166 slows down just from the filesystem itself. I explicitly run jfs, as it is particularly light on cpu. (I believe ext2 is also an option, but you lose journaling).

Not calling you a liar, just very surprised to hear such a report.

wkat42423y ago

Those were very different times though. All software was much lighter. The filesystems of the time were fine on it (and I believe NTFS already had journalling even in those days).

I'm not sure what kind of '166' you have. But you're probably running at least a modern webbrowser as IE 4 is no longer suitable in this day & age. Most sites didn't even use https. You also probably use modern-day crypto. Because it's modern adversaries you want to protect yourself again. By using it to do modern things you're taking it a bit out of context.

I was running Windows 2000 on it, with regular NTFS. I did some webbrowsing and Visual Basic for Applications and ASP development. All this fared just fine with full disk encryption (PGP Desktop's "Whole Disk Encryption").

My older work laptop with Windows NT 4 workstation was also fully encrypted. Also with third-party software of course.

1 more reply

zargon3y ago

In college I got by with a 75 MHz Pentium with full disk encryption. I didn't notice any performance penalty.

ranger_danger3y ago

I'll take things that never happened for $200.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

wkat42423y ago

I think there was just less focus on security back in those days. We used the same password everywhere, left thumb drives in taxis, used telnet instead of SSH and regular http.

mtrower3y ago

Wat.

My 166 slows down just from the filesystem itself. I explicitly run jfs, as it is particularly light on cpu. (I believe ext2 is also an option, but you lose journaling).

Not calling you a liar, just very surprised to hear such a report.

wkat42423y ago

Those were very different times though. All software was much lighter. The filesystems of the time were fine on it (and I believe NTFS already had journalling even in those days).

My older work laptop with Windows NT 4 workstation was also fully encrypted. Also with third-party software of course.

1 more reply

zargon3y ago

In college I got by with a 75 MHz Pentium with full disk encryption. I didn't notice any performance penalty.

ranger_danger3y ago

I'll take things that never happened for $200.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse