Over the years, I've always observed the state where "The faster the CPU and hardware advances, the slower software becomes and brings the speed down again". I used to work very swiftly with that old laptop thrown on the side (now 8 years old), Now it's the slowest PC that I think of, I can only use it for word processing.
I can understand the demand that advanced GUI and newer feature rich applications have, but the question is were is the sealing, how far can an OS, spreadsheet or word processor keep eating CPU to deliver only minor additions hear and there?, some times only cosmetic!!
Now, it seams that notion has extended to websites!!, Many are becoming more and more CPU hungry, and I can't see for what? They won't show up slow if you had i5 quad core, but they will if you had any thing before an i3. I've seen simple menus that can eat 50% CPU while opening. Pages that have like 10 Youtube video's eat so much, just by displaying (NOT playing). Sure it's an old PC yea, but your are a WEBSITE, not a 3d video game or a weather simulation. Similar websites viewed very nicely 5 years ago with those same old (new then) computers.
The thing is, your i5 or i7 will start to feel slow 5 years from now simply because of OS, software and websites. It seams that since many programmers TEST their software/website on their NEW computer, they tend to forgive a 1% or 2% CPU usage which will show up high in older computers. This allows programmers to get away with inefficient code just because their own hardware can run it faster.
I admit that this post was rather a diffuse of my own frustration rather than a technical aspect of things. But I guess my point is, PROGRAMMERS should do a better job in terms of performance testing.