Counting

I can count up to ten out loud in about two seconds. How fast can you count to ten?

Computers can count much, much faster than you can I can.

My laptop computer counts so fast that it seems instantaneous to me until I get close to 1 billion. Incidentally, my laptop's processor is advertized at 2.2 gigahertz, which is a fancy way of saying 2.2 billion operations per second. However, counting in this manner is at least two operations per step, one for incrementing and the other to check if we reached the maximum yet, so it takes my laptop roughly 2 seconds to count up to 2.2 billion. Which is about how long it takes me to count to ten.