I will try to explain - going back to XP may not take you back far enough.
I recently read a history of early NT development, and then installed NT4 in a VM to play with, choosing a FAT disk. It is /extremely/ responsive. Much more so than the host OS, Windows 10.
The NT4 and 95 shells were tight code. They were replaced a few years later by the more flexible "Active Desktop". This was less responsive.
In later releases, Windows started to incorporate background features, such as automatic file indexing. File indexing is IO intensive and hammers your CPU cache.
When I was regularly using NT4 (years ago), I had an impression that there was some overhead caused by registry searches. If this was ever a thing, improvements in raw computing power have conquered it.
If anyone else wants to try, NT4 and VC++ cost me next to nothing on amazon. For a good editor, get microemacs. Python2.3 works. (Don't let it near an open network.)
I recently read a history of early NT development, and then installed NT4 in a VM to play with, choosing a FAT disk. It is /extremely/ responsive. Much more so than the host OS, Windows 10.
The NT4 and 95 shells were tight code. They were replaced a few years later by the more flexible "Active Desktop". This was less responsive.
In later releases, Windows started to incorporate background features, such as automatic file indexing. File indexing is IO intensive and hammers your CPU cache.
When I was regularly using NT4 (years ago), I had an impression that there was some overhead caused by registry searches. If this was ever a thing, improvements in raw computing power have conquered it.
If anyone else wants to try, NT4 and VC++ cost me next to nothing on amazon. For a good editor, get microemacs. Python2.3 works. (Don't let it near an open network.)