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Lost Opportunity? Windows 10 Has the Same Minimum PC Requirements As Vista
MojoKid writes Buried in the details of Microsoft's technical preview for Windows 10 is a bit of a footnote concerning the operating system's requirements. Windows 10 will have exactly the same requirements as Windows 8.1, which had the same requirements as Windows 8, which stuck to Windows 7 specs, which was the same as Windows Vista. At this point, it's something we take for granted with future Windows release. As the years roll by, you can't help wondering what we're actually giving up in exchange for holding the minimum system spec at a single-core 1GHz, 32-bit chip with just 1GB of RAM. The average smartphone is more powerful than this these days. For decades, the standard argument has been that Microsoft had to continue supporting ancient operating systems and old configurations, ignoring the fact that the company did its most cutting-edge work when it was willing to kill off its previous products in fairly short order. what would Windows look like if Microsoft at least mandated a dual-core product? What if DX10 — a feature set that virtually every video card today supports, according to Valve's Steam Hardware Survey, became the minimum standard, at least on the x86 side of the equation? How much better might the final product be if Microsoft put less effort into validating ancient hardware and kicked those specs upwards, just a notch or two? If Microsoft did raise the specs a notch or two with each release, I think there'd be some justified complaints about failing to leave well enough alone, at least on the low end.
That needs to go windows server dumped them years ago.
As the years roll by, you can't help wondering what we're actually giving up in exchange for holding the minimum system spec at a single-core 1GHz, 32-bit chip with just 1GB of RAM. The average smartphone is more powerful than this these days
They're forgetting that Vista ran like shite on those specs :) and NO smartphones are not more powerful, although they are close to atoms at similar speeds now.
http://chimpbox.us
I have worked IT in Banking (twice) and Healthcare (once), in both neither company wanted to spend money on a desktop pc. They wanted the cheapest they could get. Businesses buy Windows. It is hopelessly annoying, but a fact of life.
If you want the PC that you've been using for the past 5 years that works perfectly well to stop being able to run the latest version of its OS well then it would be a Mac.
I think the reason the specs aren't increasing much is because the pace of hardware improvements isn't moving as fast as it used to. Nowadays, you pick up an i7 and 16Gb of RAM, your favorite video card, toss an SSD in there and you've basically hit the limit.
All we're getting these days is more cores as the whole gigahertz wars ended 10 years ago.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Windows is an operating system. It's job is to allow other applications to be executed simultaneously. All of the resources windows consumes are resources denied to other applications. I'm not saying that we need to be stingy like in the bad old days when programmers where more concerned about saving clock cycles than writing scalable, maintainable, and reusable code. But now that we are passed all that, there is no sense in wasting cycles frivolously. Let the applications do that.
Microsoft bucks the bloat trend and you cry about what you are missing?
You want higher specs, go get them. But mom and dad shouldn't need them to use windows.
Since when is having a light-weight OS a bad thing? Haven't people been harping on MS enough for having bloated OSes?
Sure, make allowances for multiple-core and multiple CPUs on the not-so-low end, but making the minimum requirement a single CPU was definitely smart on their end.
Before we go any further, I think it'd be good to provide an example of what feature you believe Microsoft has failed to implement in order to keep the requirements low. I can't think of what that would be. Because failing the need to meet some specific requirement, I don't know why system requirements should need to keep going up, especially when you consider that we use our desktop/laptop computers for the same things as we did 10 years ago. Web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets. For games, you can support weaker/older systems and just scale the graphics down.
So unless there's a specific feature that would suck up resources, I'd actually kind of expect that an OS system requirements might go down. As code continues to be optimized, you'd get better performance on the same hardware. Of course, there's a limit to that. But why complain that the OS isn't an ever-bloating resource hog?
ThemMinimum specs for the OS doesn't hold anything back. 64-bit builds exist and "fancy" features of the UI can become disabled if certain hardware isn't available. Furthermore I'd say it points to some level of efficiency in that the OS can run on a low end system. Arguments can be made either way about whether the sheer slowness would be totally a fault of Windows or of the software you're running.
What people want is a lightweight OS that uses the minimum amount of resources to operate. And you want software bloat?
The OS should not be driving the resources required. That should be a function of the programs you run. Yes, I know Windows is more than the OS, but even the interface to the OS should not be sucking resources. Let me decide what I need.
I am working for a company with 6000+ desktops. I do not understand why our client engineering is rolling out faster hardware every year. 95% of all office workers need MS office, a browser and email. Most of the home users just need a browser these days. Those core i7 are just idling around heating office space.
I have now started rolling out 200 dollar desktop hardware (zotac). Which could really become a problem for microsoft. The windows licence price tag looks really expensive with these hardware prices.
Office problems are solved, we do not need faster hardware. And microsoft is manly making money from, *drumbeat*, office workers.
Best
-S
A OS is suppose to take a little as possible so apps have resources to do stuff. If the OS needs all that what is left for the rest of the system? That shooting for good performance on low spec systems inspires good code which usually scales. If you want pretty use plugins or CPU runtime branching as not everyone just plays solitaire and rather use them cycles for work
I can't believe this dickhole is actually complaining about more compatibility...
No one should be using Windows with minimum hardware. A lot of people bitched and moaned about Windows Visita when it first came out. A better CPU and more memory made a huge difference for Vista. If you want to run minimum hardware specs, install Linux, pick a desktop manager (I prefer Blackbox), and install your favorite non-IE web browser.
You didn't mention Windows XP.
A reason why so many computers are still running Windows XP is that they can't be upgraded. Microsoft added the requirement that the CPU must support NX which many of the old CPUs running Windows XP do not support.
You're not really "giving up" anything. You don't turn on the computer to play Operating System. You do it to run applications. So Windows requires a low overhead? Well that's great, an operating system SHOULD have a low overhead because it's supposed to get out of the way, not use resources. Your computer is a zero-sum game, memory and CPU that is taken by the OS is usually unavailable to your apps, the things that are actually important (barring, of course, apps that don't multi-thread and can only use part of the CPU, etc).
I suppose we have this fantasy of rotating windows, whiz-bang effects, SFX on the window borders on the desktop.. what do you really get from that? Anything beyond saying "oh that's cool" when you see a demo on the store shelf or a flashy yet impractical interface on a TV show? I know what I got from that -- an annoyance with Gnome 3, GPU memory reserved by the f*%^ing interface, and a lot of time spent figuring out how to turn that nonsense off (thank God Gnome's extensions make that easier to do that now than it was a few years ago!).
Maybe a simpler interface is better. Maybe an interface that doesn't try to do too much visually results in a more USABLE experience. More bells and whistles are not better.
What was added when specs were raised?
WHAT, SPECIFICALLY was added?
What do we need higher specs for? WHAT do you want added, that needs higher specs?
You're just a fucking idiot.
Seriously what else do you need the OS to do that it cant do on those specs? The OS's job is just to manage the system to allow your other programs (with higher reqs) to do your magical whizbang things.
Did you want your start menu to pop up at 64-bit, 16gb ram speeds?
If you need more power, you know who you are: hardcore gamers, number crunchers, etc.
Businesses are using these machines to interface with web sites which are database front-ends. You could do that with even lower specifications if the bells and whistles were turned off. The most hardware intensive things most home users do is watch videos. Some poorly designed web sites are forcing the machine to hold lots of image data in memory, so we need lots of RAM these days; but that's about it. Some truly horrible web sites are taking more cycles than hi-res video! It just goes to show you how much damage a poorly trained script jockey can do. I don't see any reason to change Windows reqs for those dumbasses. They need to fix their shit.
Anyway, the min req. has plateaued for most of us. There's nothing to stop you from over-speccing to run some hot new game or crunch numbers. You don't need those specs just to run a desktop though. At least, you shouldn't...
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It was the first Apple computer I bought. It will be the last Apple computer I ever buy.
There's no reason why an OS needs to be any larger than it is. Let the market add value to a cornerstone product. There's no reason that the Linux kernel should ever take up a gig of ram because, hey lets throw more boiler plate into it.
Microsoft has one job with Windows, and that's to make the best application shell possible for almost every possible desktop need. I think they've done a pretty good job at it, though they've fucked their UI core so badly time and time again, it feels like they're just re-arranging chairs to justify the upgrade cost.
Bye!
Have you not seen the HP Steam 7 or the Lumia 620? Both run Windows 8 and both have specs at or below the minimum for the desktop OS. There are also plenty of businesses that have pushed their PC refresh cycle out to 5-7 years so if you want them to upgrade you have to keep the minimum at what a typical business would have bought 5+ years ago.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I think it is sad we live in a world where people still aren't shocked by the Vista requirements and want them to be higher. WTF is wrong with the lot of you?
**Oh these minimum system specifications are high this must be a really good OS!**
No it doesn't work that way... That would mean cars with lower fuel millage are better because they require more fuel, and therefore are doing so much more than your prius pha!
You have to remember that windows 10 is going to be unified across multiple platforms. Tablet, phone, laptop and desktop. Some of the low end phones may only meet the minimum requirements. Also not all phones/tablets will have DX10 or a video card that supports it. The higher the minimum requirements for the OS the more that it takes away from the over all system so that it can function.
This is the idea behind using composites in tranportation manufacturing. Lower the weight of the vehicle so that the engine isn't mainly being used to push around the heavy weight of the vehicle.
I think this minimum spec idea misses the point. We're talking about an operating system, not an application. The OS should provide a platform (and, to a certain extent, services) upon which users will run the applications that actually get things done. The OS shouldn't have huge minimum specs because it's supposed to be relatively unobtrusive. When we start trying to load the OS down with all kinds of things that ought to be done with apps, we end up with a bloated mess, a one-size-fits-none concept that inconveniences everyone equally. I'd much rather they kept the specs low and pared some of the fluff from the OS instead.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Higher minimum requirements just means lower performance and often questionable benefits. Vista was targeted for a lot of hate because it traded performance for aesthetics. Do you really think anyone would thank microsoft for doing that again?
The great thing about windows keeping the same requirements even as hardware rockets in performance is that windows just runs faster. A lot faster. It also leaves a lot more performance (and memory) spare for running actual programs - which is after all what windows is for. Anyway, what would you expect to get by increasing hardware requirements? Shinier windows? Nicer screensavers? Save it, I want a quick boot and high performance programs/games.
But killing backwards-compatible software bloat, that's actually worthy of discussion.
They have increased the requirements on 64-bit edition over the time. Like Windows 8.1 requires that your CPU supports CMPXCHG16b, an instruction which was not included in early x86-64 CPUs.
What we have gained is smaller and smaller computing devices with more and more energy efficiency which allows us to go mobile and to also reduce costs on cloud infrastructure. Maybe it forced a step backwards in terms of application software compared to high powered desktops... but being able to put what would have been a fully spec'd computer less than a decade ago in your pocket and have it run for a day on batteries is something to find amazing and should not be lamented.
I'd say if we are looking at making the desktop more relevant again, then it has to be a worthwhile enough experience to overcome the trade off to be sitting at a desk. High resolution monitors, multi-monitor applications, touch screen high resolution monitors laid flat on a conference table. (not head-mounted displays because those should be hooked to mobile devices to avoid cords), these seem like opportunities for "desktop" or workstation class or fixed computing applications where the display or inputs won't just fit in your pocket or on your glasses. Otherwise mobile and cloud computing are where it is at.
Just to run the OS requires 1GB of ram? ...and I'm meant to be impressed with how "small" this is?
Because the version number matches MojoKid's IQ.
Not having to raise the minimum requirements is a good thing, you dolt.
Keeping software requirements low is a good thing, and there isn't really any justification for making a basic desktop OS require good hardware if all people want to do is the same stuff they were doing ten years ago. If they wanted to weed out underpowered PCs, they should mandate an improved version of the Windows Experience Index be advertised alongside PCs with simple numbers for office and gaming performance, and maybe energy efficiency.
On the other hand, it's long past time to put 32 bit out to pasture, at least on the desktop. Remember, this OS will probably still be supported in the mid-2020s. I'm not going to want to maintain a 32 bit legacy codebase when PCs are coming with 256GB of ram standard.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The reason the specs have not changed is because CPUs and systems in general have been capable of doing most common tasks for at least 10 years. Are the use cases for extreme power? Yes. The submitter, however, makes it sound like it's a bad thing to be able to run on a wide range of hardware, including older slower machines. Are the minimum spec machines going to be able to run Crysis? Nope. Will they run Outlook, Work, and a browser? Yep. This is a non-story.
I'm not saying that we need to be stingy like in the bad old days when programmers where more concerned about saving clock cycles than writing scalable, maintainable, and reusable code. But now that we are passed all that, there is no sense in wasting cycles frivolously. Let the applications do that.
Clearly you fail to understand maintainable, reusable source code can be and has been written with an eye to efficiency (clock cycles, memory). You 1MB minimum helloworld types need a kick in the posterior and then a drill to the skull.
Sure the average is higher, but you can still buy new systems that are that small. Its good I can stuff them in a time (except drive space) VM's and do virtual desktops. Keeping it efficient gives us more to do. Now, if you wanted to have tune points that enable or disable features according to hardware you could make that case. But I do like that Win10 preview was the easiest OS install I've ever done.
Why the heck would an OS need to be dual core? This is dumb. The Vista specs are plenty powerful, it takes horribly bloated and bad coding to require more than that. For example Apple which doesn't support hardware that is 4 years old even though they've added nothing even remotely demanding enough to require cutting edge hardware.
Until we get a 3D virtual UI that has to interpret brain waves while driving your car for you, the Vista specs are plenty for competent coders.
The complaints have always been that MS caters too much to old software and that it continually requires more powerful hardware just to run the OS.
They are starting to buck this hardware trend at the 1 GiB barrier (for the OS!). They finally dropped support for some old, buggy 16-bit DOS and Windows programs that third party developers wrote by bypassing any documented API, too. Most of the software ever written for Windows still runs on Windows, though.
If you want to see what you're asking for, take a look at the 8 desktop vs. 8 RT fiasco when MS told people it was all Windows but it didn't run the same software. Don't ask for that.
My first 64 bit chip was the Athlon64 back in 2003 -- over a decade ago. If you're a developer in a compiled language, you presently either must (a) make a 32 bit version and ship it for both or (b) make separate versions and make yourself a support/testing nightmare. No surprise -- most developers opt for (a).
...but in a way, that makes using x64 Windows moot. Since there's no software for it (other than the OS itself a web browser or two), why switch? From extra registers, to more available memory, to the no-execute bit -- there's many good reasons to be using 64 bit software.
The real reason, of course, is that many business run ancient 16-bit applications that won't run under a 64-bit OS. This could be fixed with an emulator, but MS, unlike Apple, doesn't have a history of making backwards incompatible moves tha ultimately improve its platform.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Me too. My iMac is perfectly fine for what I need it to do which is to look nice in the living room, browse the net, and show photos. I don't appreciate the lack of support whatsoever. That thing cost me nearly $2000. Google even dropped Chrome support for it. I don't understand what's wrong with it. It works well.
I decided to explore the world of Apple on the cheap. I got a used Mac for low $$ to see what we could do with it. It went in the dumpster in short order because it could NOT be upgraded enough to even work on a modern web site.
It was less than 2 years ago that the Linux kernel dropped official support for the 80386 chip in the "current" kernel. It's successor, the 80486, has been around since 1989.
Several versions of the Linux kernel that still support the 386 are still officially supported. See http://www.kernel.org/ for details.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why limit your pool of potential customers, if you don't have to.
Has the OP ever tried to run Windows on a minimum-spec'd system? Even XP on a system with those specs frequently goes into pauses long enough to make the operator (me) ask, "did it crash, or what?"
To paraphrase what others have posted, the operating system is the means, not the end. It should be small and lightweight. And it should bloody well not require beefier hardware than necessary. I've found that even generously spec'd systems still bog down under Windows as unknown processes kick off to do who knows what sort of housekeeping.
Fast and resource non-intensive should be an uncompromiseable goal of an OS.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Slackware Linux doesn't require an extremely powerful system to run (though having one is quite nice :). It will run on systems as far back as the 486. Below is a list of minimum system requirements needed to install and run Slackware.
486 processor
64MB RAM (1GB+ suggested)
About 5GB+ of hard disk space for a full install
CD or DVD drive (if not bootable, then a bootable USB flash stick or PXE server/network card)
Debian:
A Pentium 4, 1GHz system is the minimum recommended for a desktop system.
Table 3.2. Recommended Minimum System Requirements
Install Type RAM (minimal) RAM (recommended) Hard Drive
No desktop 64 megabytes 256 megabytes 1 gigabyte
With Desktop 128 megabytes 512 megabytes 5 gigabytes
Ubuntu Desktop Edition
700 MHz processor (about Intel Celeron or better)
512 MiB RAM (system memory)
5 GB of hard-drive space (or USB stick, memory card or external drive but see LiveCD for an alternative approach)
VGA capable of 1024x768 screen resolution
Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB port for the installer media
Internet access is helpful
Linux Mint 16
System requirements:
x86 processor (Linux Mint 64-bit requires a 64-bit processor. Linux Mint 32-bit works on both 32-bit and 64-bit processors).
512 MB RAM (1GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
5 GB of disk space
Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
CD/DVD drive or USB port
It was the first Apple computer I bought. It will be the last Apple computer I ever buy.
That's a stupid attitude. I have first-generation Black MacBook (2006) with a 32-bit CPU that the Apple Store repaired in 2012 for a broken CPU fan. Most PCs are obsolete the day after the warrantry expires, and no manufactuer would repair an out-of-warrantry PC. The fan went out again on my MacBook this summer. Since the CPU is 32-bit, and Google is no longer supporting the 32-bit version of Chrome, it's time for me to get a newer Mac.
Interesting, why the last Apple computer?
Are you switching to PC's and Windows?
I always assumed Apple massively optimised their OS for the hardware and for fluid responsiveness.
And that's one of the reasons why it has the lowest power usage and the highest battery life compared to all other laptops - even surprisingly a massively stripped-down OS like ChromeOS and chromebooks.
Considering Microsoft's goal is to unite all their operating systems and have the same system running on all platforms this means they WANT to run windows on smartphones. So keeping the systems requirements less than the average smartphone would be their intent if they want that initiative to succeed. DUH.
On the other hand, it's long past time to put 32 bit out to pasture, at least on the desktop.
After the RT debacle, Microsoft wants to ship the same operating system on the desktop and the laptop. And there are still plenty of laptops that come with less than 4 GB of RAM, such as the ASUS Transformer Book.
I'm not going to want to maintain a 32 bit legacy codebase when PCs are coming with 256GB of ram standard.
Just be glad Microsoft isn't Nintendo, which still has to maintain a runtime environment for its 8-bit codebase on its current consoles.
It's like the homebuilt PC market (which still sort of exists), such as Cube where the 'basic' model is little more than a motherboard into which you have buy all the extras that make it work, like RAM or non volitile SSD. It's like the new batch of $99 tablets purported to do 'everything' except of course for anything. It's like ordering a new Levovo Yoga and you discover that getting enough SSD to make it practical doubles the price.
The funny thing is that apps are so bloated and so awful that even getting the most hardware you can afford is really only the difference between doesn't work at all and runs so poorly you think it doesn't work at all. My office laptop is a Toshiba R840 with 8GB RAM and a quad core CPU, a 500GB rotating drive and between the Java shit, management apps, endpoint agents, background tasks and 'automatic' updates it's a piece of shit that spends all day thrashing its brains out.
MS is simply being lazy because if they told you what you really need you'd be forced to get a bigger machine than most people want to pay for. And after all they didn't say HOW it would run, only that would start (maybe).
Because it is more expensive to support 6 versions of Windows than it would be to get people to migrate their old computers from 2000/XP/Vista/7/8 to 10. Not that it will happen, but that would ultimately save money.
It would look like a video game instead of an OS
Because both Intel and AMD still sell 32-bit, and single-core chips. And because manufacturers sell brand new products with these chips.
Because while Steam's hardware survey may show the vast majority of people use DirectX 10 hardware, that survey is limited to people who install a GAME CLIENT. Many low-end home and business users will still have old integrated graphics - which are fine for non-game uses!
Because Microsoft wants to keep the low-end market, because it keeps people on Windows. As evidenced by their recent move to make Windows *FREE* on low-end systems.
When vista came out there were a million "Need to spend $1000 to run vista" jokes floating around this place.
Now, years later, even though computers have moved on significantly, microsoft has released specs on a lightweight OS that has not bloated even an inch and you guys are like "well, this seems like a missed opportunity".
Gimme a fucking break.
I don't know you tell me what difference would mandating two cores or DX10 make? What is there to be gained?
Why they just make a "new" version and and "old" version? Oh yeah, it might cost an extra penny..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
How much better might the final product be if Microsoft put less effort into validating ancient hardware and kicked those specs upwards, just a notch or two?
It would look like OS X. It would delay their nearly realized plan of "convergence". It would alienate their largest paying customers (business and government).
I can only assume that MojoKid is a gamer with little grasp on reality.
Somebody forgot to tell my Mac that, because more than six years after purchase it's still running the latest OS. I just ran an update this morning, in fact. I think we spent $35 on an upgrade once.
If you wanted to move all the way to Win 8.1 64-bit your CPU had to support PAE, NX, and SSE2. Otherwise you're limited to 32-bit.
Honestly, the minimal required configuration is more to appease the marketing department and industrial partners than any sort of practically useful information.
Anyone who has attempted to use Windows Vista/7/8.x on anything with less than 4GB of RAM knows that it is completely unusable. It might run in 1GB, but there is nothing left for any applications. Even 4GB is barely enough for some basic work. For any serious use one needs at least 8GB or more and a modern CPU - likely an i3 or i5 at least.
The other reason is likely pressure from Intel, because they want to keep selling their Atom CPUs. Which are both slow (when clock speed is concerned) and most of them are 32bit only due to various issues (some CPUs not supporting 64bits, mobos/BIOS/drivers not working/not available for 64bits, etc). The moment Windows was 64bit-only, Atom would be dead. It is the same story as downgrading the requirements for Vista so that it could be used on the machines running the integrated Intel graphics back in the day. It was practically unusable, but allowed Intel to claim it is compatible ...
My Mac is no longer supported (hasn't been for a couple of releases) by OS-X because the CPU doesn't do 64-bits. It's not even 10 years old yet, and it isn't supported by OS-X.
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It was the first Apple computer I bought. It will be the last Apple computer I ever buy.
Apple is a hardware seller. They make money on leaving old hardware behind in their software. Microsoft does not make money on making hardware obsolete, on the contrary, as long as it doesn't take them too long to support something, they make MORE money on supporting old hardware.
Interesting. I don't encourage you to buy shiny new computer every couple of years, but 10 years is a pretty good run for any computer. .... it so much) for the fear of your karma points ?
maybe my next computer will be a MAC.
Or this was just a covert endorsement hidden under the cover of (O I hate
just think how well you could hack the gibson if you had full 3d representation of the file system. Along with logo'd icons scrolling past for each packet your network was sending / recieving. Thats what IT needs and by proxy what M$ needs.. a special effects department for OS's.
I see two problems with upping the system requirements for a new version of the OS.
1) (and probably most important) The "low end" may operate on slim margins, but it does sell licenses and increase penetration. I don't think Microsoft can afford to ignore this market.
2) The OS is not an application! It runs applications. For the OS to be light weight with respect to system resources is a GOOD thing, as it allows more resources to be available for applications. I'd much rather have my apps run faster than see the desktop do flashy stuff or the OS run a bunch of heavy weight services just in case I might need them someday.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Upgrade to 7 or 8 and enjoy a little better performance. Not magically better, but better.
No business is going to "upgrade" their desktop machines for Windows 10. Their business applications won't run any better. If Microsoft wants to sell this as an upgrade, it has to run on the installed base of hardware.
Realistically, business mostly wants to run Windows 7.
...you feel that they're not bloating the OS enough?
Someone on Slashdot is actually complaining that Windows runs well on older hardware? We're through the looking glass here, people.
I installed Windows Technical Preview on a Gateway TA6 convertible tablet, previously running Windows XP Tablet Edition on a T7600 C2D, 2GB DDR-6400 RAM, and I would like to say it's smooth, but it's really not. To be fair, the 945GM probably holds it back. Still, the unsupported FinePoint digitizer and Wifi that only works every other time it's turned on are big showstoppers. Would that Microsoft would spend some internal resources supporting machines like this that *should* run any recent Windows version well, but which have been entirely forgotten by their manufacturers. I suspect the Intel 3945ABG adaptor for Wifi is deliberately obsoleted, at any rate. The FinePoint company appears to have been bought, with no plan to support devices already in users' hands.
About your GoPro video: Can't you edit the video in standard definition, export the edit decision list, and then re-render in high definition?
Could you describe some of the features that could be made richer by requiring more hardware for the operating system itself?
It has all the minimum requirements of Vista because it _is_ Vista SP3. For the last few editions, they have changed the UI but under the hood it's just Vista in new clothes. And we keep throwing them money every time.
If you take away the internet, your computer becomes significantly worse than it was.
There's plenty I can do with my PC while it is disconnected from the Internet. Because I have no Internet connection while commuting to and from work on public transit, I typically carry about three hours of programming work on my laptop that can be done without connection to the Internet. Or I might download a bunch of pages from Cracked and open them in Firefox tabs to read on the bus. Or I might download an entire page of Slashdot comments, compose replies while offline, and post them the next time I connect. (I did just that for most of this very comment.)
Once you stop needing computing cycles locally, why would you upgrade your system (you being anyone/company/institution)?
In the era of computing on someone else's server, desktop CPUs remain important for at least three reasons. First, desktop and server PCs use CPUs of the same or similar microarchitecture. Better CPUs means each server can handle more load. Second, not everybody wants to blow their entire 5 GB/mo cap on bouncing things off someone else's server. Third, using someone else's server means you're subject to the privacy (or lack thereof) policy of the server operator and whatever other anti-user "dark patterns" are implemented in the non-free software running on that server.
they need all the users they can get — they cant afford to shut out any percent of their upgrader base, or windows 10 slow uptake rates will get users with lesser machines to further jump ship to the linux and mac folds.
2cents from toronto
Or, you know, simply use ARM
Apart from RISC OS way back when, most operating systems designed for ARM CPUs have either A. cryptographic lockout to shut out software not approved by the hardware maker, or B. an inflexible "all maximized all the time" window management policy, or C. both. These are not inherent in the ARM architecture but so closely associated with it that people go x86 just to avoid them.
Win32 still runs 16 bit applications and still runs on 32 bit processors. Since there were 32 bit CPU's designed to be Vista compatible, it makes sense to keep around the 32 bit version of Windows 10 so long as the operating system can still reasonably be run on those computers and CPUs.
Servers are a different matter entirely. Most of the new developments in Windows Server (like virtualization) require more than 4GB of RAM to run effectively. For legacy environments, an upgrade to Server 2008 will keep old servers running for several decades.
By contrast, my old tablet PC from 2005, which shipped "Vista compatible" with XP Tablet PC edition works very well (as well as can be expected) with Windows 7. It works very well as a test-system for doing things such as data logging and as a OneNote entry device at home (my other Tablet PC has a smaller, touch-sensitive LCD which makes it more ideal for mobile computing than sitting at my desk writing out equations).
Another component to consider is that bumping the specs for the OS can have a significant impact on DaaS/VDI offerings. Just increasing the RAM requirements by 1-2GB can be significant when you're running 50-250 guest OS on a single piece of hardware. Microsoft has a vested interest in keeping those specs as low as possible to make greater consolidation happen at a lower price point.
Microsoft would love to assure that everyone everywhere bought a bleeding edge brand new computer every month. Seriously - if they could assure it then they would.
You must be young. 95% of everything that windows Vista, 7,8, and 8.1 did was done well by XP on a decent Pentium III. Go look at the minimum hardware required there.
Improvement in software, when it is actual improvement and not bloatware, means that you can do more with the same hardware. Instead of taking to floppy disks to hold the program, it would take just one. Optimized code. Efficient and clean.
Windows idea of improvement is going from a box of floppies to a CD rom to a DVD rom - to do the same job as the two floppies.
They charge more too.
Before you convince them to remove themselves even more from the marketplace by even more substantially watering down the value proposition of their product, you have to understand the fundamentals of computer science.
Sometimes the industry-standard apps aren't even officially ported to X11/Linux. For example, every new hire in graphic design who habitually uses Photoshop or Illustrator for Windows would likely have to be retrained in GIMP or Inkscape. How practical would that be?
In case you haven't noticed processors aren't getting any faster and haven't been for ages. Why would you want Windows using even more of the processor rather than letting applications use the rest?
And because of that there are still a bunch of low-end PCs being sold and people simply not upgrading because really there's no point. Microsoft upping the requirements would just cut down their market. There are too many options for them to bully people like they used to do.
Many 16 bit applications from the 1980's will run fine on Windows 10 32 bit edition.
Microsoft, more than any other company, has spent money ensuring that old software runs smoothly on newer operating systems. It is not perfect, and it has a lot of downsides, but it is also whey the corporate world and government has embraced MS as the desktop operating system of choice.
They are not going to get rid of Windows 32 on the desktop until there are almost no desktops out there that will run it. 2014 was the first year that Intel fully embraced x64 bit architecture for all of its chips. Most computers more than 10 years old are x32. There are a ton of netbooks and netbook tablets manufactured up until 2013, many that shipped with the EOL OS XP that need to be upgraded to Windows 10.
My first-generation Nexus 7 tablet spends more milliwatts on lighting the display than on processing. In such a case, it's best to complete the processing as soon as possible so that you don't have to keep the display lit as long.
If 16-bit applications are the real problem, then perhaps Microsoft should make a Windows 3.11 for Workgroups image for Microsoft Virtual PC available to all licensed users of 64-bit Windows 10 Pro the way Windows 7 Pro came with the "XP Mode" virtual machine. But I imagine the only "16-bit applications" that most home users will be running are emulated games for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game consoles.
There isn't really that much investments in Desktop usage to get more OS Power out of it.
Mobile OS's are having to deal with new gestures and brand new sensors all the time.
Ever sense we started offloading the work to the video card the OS doesn't need that much power.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Modern graphical operating systems are expected to do much more, such as render multilingual text at arbitrary sizes. Can you even fit scalable fonts for Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Bengali, Tamil, Thai, Khmer, Chinese, and Korean into two floppies?
You can use X11/Linux, but then you'll have to keep paying the retraining cost for every new employee you hire...
FUD, pure and simple. Most modern Linux DEs look and act very similar to Windows because they're designed to do the same thing. Your typical office worker doesn't need to know more about using Linux than he does about using Windows, meaning that all they need to know is which icon to click on to do what. And, most of the office software for Linux isn't constantly changing the UI, so that once it's learned, it doesn't have to be re-learned every time there's a minor upgrade. And, as far as peripherals go, stay away from the bleeding edge, and the odd are that It Just Works.
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That blame really lies with Google for dropping support. Keep the old OS. It's stable enough anyway. You could probably get a binary of Chromium that still supports your version (but without higher OS X - specific graphics speedups).
I'm not sure exactly what we're giving up by maintaining minimum specs. Is there some rule by which raising the minimum specs improves performance on more powerful machines? Or that lower minimum specs means the OS won't run as well on the latest hardware?
I can run Ubuntu on an old 486. Does that mean it can't scale up to my i7, or that it's somehow less powerful than if they set a higher minimum?
Or is this a reaction to the fact that on the rare occasions that Mac OS has major update they always raise the minimum specs? Maybe the fact that Microsoft doesn't sell the system AND the OS together means they don't have an incentive to get us to dump our hardware when it gets to be four years old.
You are welcome on my lawn.
At least that would be consistent with unifying the Xbox operating system with phone, tablet, and desktop operating systems.
Just because hardware has advanced to a point where we could justify increasing the minimum specs for Windows, doesn't mean we should. I mean sports cars are constantly being re-engineered to maximize power (acceleration/speed) and minimize weight (even more acceleration and speed). Why would consumers want a computer that REQUIRES multiple cores just to power the OS? That's called software bloating and it isn't necessary or appreciated by consumers when their computer is rendered unusable a year into its lifetime. No, minimize the OS. This gives you maximum headroom for the applications that you REALLY care about that actually NEED the cpu/gpu/ram cycles. In addition to it running better across the board, it also allows it to run on the light end devices such as the phone in your pocket. When it comes to software, lighter is better... especially when you are dealing with the dang Operating System.
Let me get this right. You want MS to bloat the OS some more and require more hardware?
An OS needn't, and shouldn't, be more complex than is necessary to get the job done. By keeping Windows at a constant level of resource-intensiveness, Microsoft has made more room on modern hardware for even more advanced high-end applications -- and has made it feasible to refresh old PCs with the latest Windows. (Really important; the typical corporate drone's PC is profoundly rinky-dink.) This is stuff we used to cheer Linux for doing while Microsoft operating systems inflated with each generation. Now we bemoan Microsoft for keeping the size of Windows down while Linux bloats up the way we made fun of Windows for doing. (Have you seen GNOME 3?)
Microsoft deserves full credit for keeping their system size and complexity down over the past few revs.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
It's not the OS, but the applications. There is a lot of business software that only exists for Windows and sometimes a very specific version of Windows at that.
. . . it just is not as easy to compare anymore.
Some of the fastest chips actually have the lowest "reference" clock speed because they are designed to dynamically overclock and shift loads between cores to maintain good thermal efficiency. Also, it's hard to compare the clock speed of a single core Pentium design to the newer Intel core designs because Intel's newer chips are a lot faster at lower clock speeds.
So, the comparison has become more complicated, but if you compare the maximum factory authorized speed of one Intel chip to another, you will find as a general rule that clock speed is still king in single-threaded performance (for instance, an i7 that uses turbo boost to reach 3.2 Ghz is going to be slower than an i5 which reaches a max of 3.8 Ghz). On the other hand, a Pentium IV clocked at 3.8 Ghz is going to be remarkably slower, even in single-threaded applications, than an i7 with a base clock of 2.26 Ghz, because you are comparing apples to oranges.
*I detect gamers here. TFS brings up one example: Compatibility with a graphics standard critical to the gaming community. Gawd forbid that there should be one line of code in there that supports users other than the basement-dwelling community. It's the same for Linux and X11. Scrape the GUI capability right down to the minimum needed for 3D rendering needed by the games. Screw all the other users (native network-aware displays for example) and then cry "Muh games!"
Fuck off. Go buy a console.
From TFS:
ignoring the fact that the company did its most cutting-edge work when it was willing to kill off its previous products in fairly short order.
When was that, exactly?
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
They repaired it, sure, but charged you $130 bucks.
Think about that: $130 to replace a CPU fan.
If a local shop charged a customer that much for that job, I'd recommend that people avoid them.
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It may not be supported by the latest OS 10.9.x but it is still supported by Lion 10.7.x and Lion is still getting OS updates from Apple. So you are still supported. Eventually that will change once they release Yosemite in the next few months. Apple generally doesn't support more than a couple versions back... basically to cover their 3yr. Apple Care extended warranty. That combined with their OS versions gives you around 5 years minimum of support. While not ideal... it's not too bad.
I also think the hardware support will lengthen as most don't need much more power to email, browse, watch videos, etc. OS versions will probably support older and older hardware, unless some new feature comes along that needs more processing power (better language processing?). My Mac Mini (Early 2009) it will be supported with Yosemite 10.10... which means even if that's the latest it can support... it will end up with minimum of ~8years of support. I think that is pretty good.
Why does everything need to look fancy just because we have the hardware for it? I thought by now everything would be running with no latency, but instead I have to wait for some designer's ~vision~ to appear before I can do anything. It doesn't take THAT much time but it's still annoying.
My office could have X11/Linux on the desktop, given that the only application that we run on the desktop is Windows Remote Desktop.
Microsoft is putting pride in one-size-fits-all... that is, the same system on Smartphones, Tablets, Cheap Netbooks, Desktops, Workstations, Webservers and Datacenter servers. The different editions are not that different.
A Windows server does not get much lighter than 30-40 GB of disk drive and 1GB of RAM. For companies with virtual machines, 10s, 100s or 1000s of them, significant amount of resources are wasted here. There are of course SAN-technologies to de-duplicate blocks, but this is both advanced and expensive. Many Windows servers dont do more job (create more value) as a web-server, light database-server, printer server, or an AD/directory server than a RaspberryPi with Raspbian can easily do. Storage requirements for Raspian is 1-2% of Windows Server!
Tablet buyers who buy an iOS/Android tablet with 64GB of storage more or less gets 64GB for their media. While an owner of a 64GB Windows tablet finds that not much more than 32GB is actually available to be used.
Even if Microsoft manage to keep their requirements at the same level for the years to come, they will still be much heavier than the competition, and in many cases it matters.
Meh I had my parents laptop (1.3ghz Pentium M, 512mb ram, 40gb hdd) running vista ~fantastically~ with some really wild optimizations. I threw 8 on it for lulz and it ran fine with no tweaks, and better with tweaks.
> The average smartphone is more powerful
[citation needed]
a single-core 1GHz, 32-bit chip with just 1GB of RAM. The average smartphone is more powerful than this these days.
Your comparing a Desktop CPU to a smart phone CPU?
Really?
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
Is that software somehow becomes better when you raise the minimum requirements. It doesn't
I work at a non-profit and have installed win 7 on machines with as little as 512MB ram. As long as you don't run any antivirus, they are usable and a 1GB machine is just fine for internet browsing and office apps. Now if you want to install an antivirus, you are talking 1.5GB minimum for a responsive system. I'd bet your wife's laptop had a bunch of always running corporate junkware on it and it may also have full disk encryption to deal with.
Her laptop runs Vista, and it's so slow as to be almost unusable.
There's a reason you have minimum specifications(IE it'll run), recommended minimums(it'll run satisfactorily if you're not a power user), and recommended specifications(it'll run good unless you're a power user).
From what I've read, they really did some incredible optimizations going from Vista to 7 and even further with 8. That's why the minimum hasn't changed much.
I don't read AC A human right
I own a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro from late 2007 with 4 GB of RAM, as of right now it still runs the latest version of Mac OS X (10.9). That is a 7 year life span, and still going. I know it is easy to bash Apple, but in this case your post is factually incorrect.
If Windows and applications were rewritten in assembly language, they wouldn't be released on time. And they'd need to be completely rewritten for the 64-bit version instead of being recompiled. C++ gets things out the door now.
Microsoft does not make money on making hardware obsolete, on the contrary, as long as it doesn't take them too long to support something, they make MORE money on supporting old hardware.
Unless they use only the version of Windows that shipped with the computer and don't buy a new version for use on the same computer. In my experience, people stick with outdated Windows until it's time to replace the hardware.
Just kill off the 32 bit version of the o/s and I'll be happy. Seriously, stop it with the 1990's technology, already.
Ya, ya, ya... legacy apps and hardware (drivers). You've got till 2020 when win7 dies to upgrade. Fair-thee-warned.
Microsoft supports its operating systems for 11 years, but that support may get extended (it could likely happen to 7 as with Windows XP)
For hardware repairs, DIY or ask an independant computer shop.
Please see my previous question about registers and cache misses.
They will run in a VM that is hosted on a hypervisor in windows 10. 16 bit apps have been treated "special" since I believe windows 2000, where they got their own process and if you had to kill one 16 bit application, they all went with that. I'm no windows expert, but I believe that since either Windows Vista or possibly Windows 7 they got hypervisored and there was no longer a separate process but an actual VM running for them.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Or upgrade to 2GB and SSD (there might be solutions like 2.5" IDE to mSATA adapter) ; clean up dust and even thermal paste as needed.
It would possibly make Vista quite bearable. Around 2016 or 2017, upgrade to Windows 10.1 or whatever it's called by then.
I was rolled out with an "Enhanced" desktop a few years back. It wasn't really all that enhanced than the normal desktop that all office types got. I (and a subgroup of others), do a lot more technical work, and use specialized software. However the folks in charge of the specs (and bean counters probably) didn't either know that the enhance spec was barely better then the base, or figured it was good enough. A bunch of us rebelled, and worked with the vendor to create a new more appropriate spec.
That said. Much of the work that used to be highly impacted by graphics cards, such as GIS, CAD, and a host of others, aren't so much anymore. It is mostly CPU dependent now. Most modern CPU of middling power are sufficient for most tasks. From my own experience the two biggest improvements are multiple monitor (also used to be video card dependent, now pretty much anything can), and RAM for large tasks which is dirt cheap anyway. The monitor allows someone that say needs to see tables on one screen, and graphics on another, or application on one, and DB on other much easier to get things done. I recall trying to use 4 really small windows on a tiny screen rather than flipping through them all the time. RAM simply allows someone who is processing a lot of data to use maybe one process rather than have to create 5 processes out of fear of running out of memory and having to repeat it all.
So while the base is good for most, there are a semi-large subset that do need something a bit better. However that bit that needs to be better has evolved over the years, and is frankly not as different as it used to be (at least in things I am exposed to). The few changes that make the most impact, are so cheap that not to do them borders on insane, as you won't pay the difference of say a 75$ annual lease payment for an employee you pay 70,000$ to simply make them happier as their job might be a little less irritating? You can still technically do stuff on a base spec, it just takes longer, might be more work, and be more frustrating. Though sometimes it does have its perks.... When I first started as an entry level, they gave me a a base box (IBM PL300 or something if my memory serves)... There was a time where I was pretty much just doing large data processing of GIS data. I would put it into smaller more manageable chunks, and automate them together in a batch. Occasionally I would miscalculate and run out of memory and have a fail, and would have to redo a few but it worked pretty well more less. However, while it was processing the computer was using everything it had, and wouldn't respond to anything else... I got into the habit of bringing a book to work. There were many days where I would do nothing but processing, and I would have the feet on the desk reading a book for the entire day(s). I had my manager come in and question me, where I would point to the spinney hourglass (or whatever it was) and say "processing". So in that way it made me happy. Though from a business standpoint, they were not really utilizing me nearly as much as they could. Of course as entry level they weren't exactly paying me all that much anyway so they probably didn't care all that much anyway. :)
I'd like to see some evidence that the performance gain due to more registers outweighs the performance loss due to fewer pointers per cache in the majority of cases. Is there a study?
seriously?? who is fucking writing this? someone heavily invested in computer hardware manufacturers? This isn't a show of a lost opportunity but rather a step in the right direction. The coding for operating systems like windows has been bloated buggy and incredibly inefficient. If you have a new operating system that can operate fast or faster on the same minimum system requirements... this shows that they are now programming more efficiently. I think the only people that would have an issue with this are people who are more interested in the hardware economy and less interested in the performance and efficiency of their computer when running a specific operating system
Those things probably ought to be streamed from proper servers.
Ezekiel 23:20
Do machines that meet Windows's system requirements even come with parallel ports anymore? I'm told the USB parallel port adapters don't really work other than for printers. I thought bit banging was done on Arduino microcontroller products nowadays.
Sostware maybe slow, but hardware is not coming out fast enough either ...
It's a 2008 Mac Pro. My employer offered to replace it with a new machine a few months ago, in fact they almost insisted on an "upgrade".
This 2008 model has two quad core Xeons running at 2.8 Ghz and 16 GB of RAM, and the latest OS (10.9.4), so there's not really much to upgrade. Since they needed to use the money as budgeted, for new computers, I accepted a laptop, a MacBook Pro Retina with 2.7 Ghz Core i7 and 16 GB RAM - the same amount of memory as the 2008 model, but plenty.
Until tablet operating systems implement window management more sophisticated than the MS-DOS-era "all maximized all the time" model,
This made me think of Star Trek and their 'PADDS', where you'd see leadership running around with several of them on their desks.
Is there any reason that we couldn't put enough storage into a phone-type device to hold all of a person's important documents, then utilize relatively cheap tablets in a distributed computing mode using short range networking sort of like bluetooth?
The way I'm picturing it each device has enough processing power to display video on it's own screen, and enough synchronized cache that a user can use at least 6-10 documents without having to constantly fetch them from the central device. Ideally you'd only look at the screen of the central device in an emergency, and I'd make it rather thicker than modern cell phones for longer battery life. If you're doing something that's actually computationally expensive, as long as it can be paralleled all the devices pitch in what they can.
Or you wait until you get home and it syncs to your home server to re-compile the latest linux kernal and all it's associated packages. ;)
I don't read AC A human right
As I understand it, a device running ARM Linux is an appliance such as a router, which has no GUI, or Android, which has the all maximized all the time policy, or a smart TV, which has a similar policy, or Chrome OS, which is mostly intended to view web pages served from someone else's server. Because this article is about Windows 10, I'm sort of referring to ARM-based devices that can fulfill the same use cases as a Windows PC. Which ARM Linux laptops am I missing that are produced for sale to the public? Or are you referring to rooting an Android or ARM Chromebook?
In my experience as a programmer, the more you work on software the smaller it should become, while the doing the same thing or even doing more. It's a paradox of software and also one of writing in general. Blaise Pascal once wrote in a letter, "I made this very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter."
Not that I would expect a tech blogger to understand this, because most of them don't know much about tech or writing.
True, you could just deploy Xubuntu and use Remmina. But how much does it cost you per seat for Windows Terminal Server CALs? I've read that they're about as expensive as just running Windows on the client.
Think about that: $130 to replace a CPU fan.
Since my eight-year-old MacBook has a 32-bit CPU, I didn't rush out to get it fix. The money would be better spent on a used Mac with a 64-bit CPU.
If a local shop charged a customer that much for that job, I'd recommend that people avoid them.
Actually, the Apple technician broke the cable between the keyboard/mouse top and motherboard. Despite being a six-year-old laptop at the time, Apple had a replacement in stock and didn't charge me for it. That practically made my MacBook as brand new as the day I got it.
Obviously, it's the point of hardware accelerators to prevent common tasks such as playing video from draining the battery. What exactly does this alone prove?
Are all codecs hardware accelerated? For example, do any royalty-free codecs (Theora, VP8, and VP9) play back with hardware acceleration, or is it just H.264?
You won't save much money on Windows licenses by streaming applications from a server if you have to make it up by buying more Terminal Server CALs.
If Wine implements something faster than Windows, it might be because it doesn't implement an implementation-defined, unspecified, or undefined corner case the same way Windows does. And if an application relies on that corner case, it won't run correctly. This reliance can be inadvertent, but it's often intentional in the case of digital restrictions management and anti-cheat measures for games.
So Windows 10 has the same hardware requirements as Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8/8.1 - so what?
Most people arguing for increased minimum specs are arguing for a system that would perform reasonably with an unspecified workload in addition to the load the OS puts on the system (for example, running MS Office 2013 applications)... Would dropping, for example, support for 32-bit x86 only hardware add or diminish the market share Windows 10 enjoys?
BTW why isn't anyone complaining about Ubuntu Linux which has similar minimum requirements and has for years?
Ken
Yes, the oversimplified summary of the minimum specs hasn't changed, and that generally supports the thesis.
BUT...
Windows 7 had the same minimum specs as Windows Vista
Windows 8 dropped support for CPUs without NX
Windows 8.1 dropped support for a certain group of chips made by AMD, due to some missing instruction. Yes, that means that some users are stranded at Windows 8 and will never be able to install 8.1 until they buy new hardware. Frankly, I believe this is why Windows 8.1 was released as a "new version" instead of the service pack it much more closely resembled. New versions can strand users of old versions, service packs can't.
And maybe Windows 10 will further raise the minimum specs without changing the oversimplified summary. Who knows?
Most modern Linux DEs look and act very similar to Windows because they're designed to do the same thing.
Like which ones? Linux MINT looks like Windows 3.1 with some odd start menu that looks completely inconsistent. Surely you've seen the uproar when Microsoft took the start menu away, people don't like even the most simple changes to the way things work.
Your typical office worker doesn't need to know more about using Linux than he does about using Windows, meaning that all they need to know is which icon to click on to do what.
Then why was there such an uproar about Windows 8's "metro" (or whatever it's called now) UI? All it had was a grid of icons so - as you say - all they need to know is which icon to click on to do what.
Why? Having a mainframe and a dependence on a network connection to that mainframe is a bad thing, not a good thing.
I spent the last three days doing a recovery on an old mediacenter hp desktop with a core 2. I lost count but it was at least 200 updates plus two service packs. It ran like a dog on 4g ram. I had to chase driver updates and remove massive crapware.
This morning I installed the technical release on it and updated it and had basic apps installed before my coffee got cold.
The damn thing runs great. I am sure there are apps that will bring it to its knees but as a web browser, casual office use machine it could bring a lot of second hand stuff back from the dump.
Every single piece of hardware got a working driver. Event viewer showed no bizarre repeated log entries and the system no longer arbitrarily decided my wireless network was suddenly a public net.
I know it won't last but fully set up system only used 13.2 g of space. We shall see how that plays out...
*"Cogito Ergo Liberalis"*
Software requirements are always lower than that recommended by the software manufacturer in order to run their software at full capacity.
System requirements are an identification of specifications for a machine that will have all but the required features disabled.
The post summary is forgetting the fact that most machines sold to businesses and in retail are Windows certified which has a far higher spec requirement than minimum. Additionally, low minimum specs is what you want because it forces engineers to build efficient code rather than be adhere to Gates' Law.
Why was there such an uproar over Metro? Alas, I never used it so I can't say. It's possible that it wasn't easy to customize, which was one of the things that drove me away from Gnome 3. Right now, I'm using Xfce 4.10, and have it set up somewhat like Win98 SE, except that it has four desktops and I can reach the main menu by right-clicking on the desktop because that's how I like it. The important thing is that there's no One True Desktop for Linux and any company considering migrating to it can do a little bit of pre-rollout experimenting to find what works best for their workforce.
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Why was there such an uproar over Metro?
Because it was different, you were presented with a simple grid of icons to launch your applications and then your applications worked exactly as they had before, very simple ... but different. The truth is the idea that "all they need to know is which icon to click on to do what", is nice in theory but doesn't fly in reality.
The summary says:
What if DX10 — a feature set that virtually every video card today supports, according to Valve's Steam Hardware Survey, became the minimum standard, at least on the x86 side of the equation?
But the survey says:
8.72% are DX10, 17.19% are DX11
The real problem is that it's only a survey of gaming machines... which are far more likely to have upgraded video cards.
Think about all those offices full of cube farms with PCs that don't need 3D at all. Those are also more likely to buy MS Office, so why would they break compatibility with the majority of their user base?
I've ranted about this since Windows Vista bloody shipped! You can't be serious. They NEED to drop 32bit support. It's time to go. It's 2014! Even the most basic CPU has been 64bit for well over 7 years - the only exception is some shitty intel atom chips (that Intel damn well should never have released)
It's time to embrace 64bit entirely, move to the future and let 32bit die out, the extra work for developers, support people, driver writers and what have you? No, just no Microsoft, come on.
Astounded how dopey this move is.
Windows simply scales it's feature set down to be able to run on the given hardware. If you wanted to use all the features then I'm sure the minimum requirement would be higher.
Well, the banking and healthcare apps mentioned at the top are probably going to require a connection anyway. But of course, small businesses are a different league.
Ezekiel 23:20
A network connection sure, but requiring a network connection that mainframe is an unnecessary and pointless restriction in an effort to hamstring the wrong operating system into your setup when you can just run the right operating system for your applications instead.
Windows XP was basically the pinnacle of operating systems. Having no where to go but down, Microsoft did go down, with Vista which most people hate. Luckily, tablets became popular and Apple made the App store a viable thing, so Microsoft now had stuff to copy and create a superficial reason to "upgrade".
Only by crippling Windows XP, by refusing to support it for later versions of support systems, such as DirectX and Aero, were the new distributions made relatively better, but as fundamental platforms, Windows XP already did it all.
It is a similar thing to the PS3 to PS4 transition. The PS3 was more than good enough to run any game, and only the awkward 8-core setup made it slightly more difficult. ... we're reached a n era of technology where things are only goign sideways or down, or chvign superficial changes ,
rather than going up in any way.
The whole thing needs a re-think, but I've been reading articles and books saying that for at least 15 years now, so I don't think it will come by complaining....
"To install a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit PC, your processor needs to support CMPXCHG16b, PrefetchW, and LAHF/SAHF." That was a requirement added as recently as Windows 8.1 that rules out some early AMD 64-bit processors that would otherwise have met the minimum system requirements for the 64-bit build (although they can still run the 32-bit version). So it's not like the minimum requirements haven't moved at all, 64-bit Windows 8.1 required newer hardware than Vista through 8.0, just not necessarily faster hardware.
Most likely Windows 10 requires those same extra instructions in the CPU that Windows 8.1 needed or it won't install, it might even have added some additional requirements for CPU features that aren't reflected in the minimum system requirements list.
I have an aluminum macbook. They only made them in late 2008.
It's running the latest version of OS X. But it's almost certainly going to be dropped by the next version.
Not bad. Frankly, I'm annoyed that the system hasn't broken yet. I want to buy a newer machine and need an excuse.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
To rebuttle the "Why not require a dual core?: Part of this, I simply state "Why would you require a dual core?". Single core processor performance has increased over time. I'm sure as hell not shelling out extra money for a incredibly basic system if I don't have to. At my organization we have around 30-40 basic Asus All-In-Ones spanning the last 4-6 years with single core Celerons, Pentiums, and Atom CPU's. These computers boot windows, are attached to a domain, restricted to hell so they can only open up this VERY minimal custom in house program that uses megabytes of memory designed just for our manufacturing process, and aren't rebooted for weeks or months and run 24x7 on 3 shifts. Many are old, physically look gross from wear and tear are starting to act up with hardware problems, so I'm current partially though a $15,000 project to replace every single one with a brand new Asus AIO that you guesed it, have a SINGLE core Celeron CPU. At $400 a pop they do the job. These things would run Windows 10 just fine, because I tested one today, runs without a hitch no problem. Why up the requirements when it does the job?
FYI: XP support ended on April 8, 2014, 12 years after release (per the top link off the Google link).
https://www.google.com/search?...
BlameBillCosby.com
" And, most of the office software for Linux isn't constantly changing the UI,"
No, but plenty of Linux Desktops are changing the UI before the applications can catch up, which is just as confusing. Then we have the shit that is systemd, that wanna-be registry for Linux.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I just took a look at the Internet Explorer 11 system requirements and they are identical to the basic Windows 8.1 requirements. That seems to imply that the system requirements posted for Windows probably cover what's needed to run the OS and its most demanding built in features, whether that means using Windows Media Player with software decoding or Internet Explorer loading a typical webpage.
If you keep in mind that they probably have to account for shared system memory across hardware devices too when publishing these minimum system requirements, then you lose 64MB-128MB to the integrated graphics (no, you don't get to pretend you have dedicated graphics if your computer only has 1GB RAM), as well as smaller amounts for every other piece of hardware connected.
Why was there such an uproar over Metro?
Because the Windows 8.x Start screen completely covers up whatever desktop application you're using as opposed to covering up only a portion and leaving the rest visible for mental context. If the Start screen could be "snapped" to a 20em wide phone sized column at the left side the way many Windows Store apps can be, it wouldn't have been nearly as much of a problem. In any case, the third party Classic Shell utility simulates a Windows 7 Start menu, making Windows 8 look like Windows 7 with flatter window decorations.
And what if you need two business apps that "exist only for a very specific version of Windows", but both of them need a different one? That was the thing I had in mind.
Ezekiel 23:20
Is that something that actually occurs? Even if it is, the solution is VMs, not a dependence on a mainframe.
advances in computers since the vista days are more memory and more cores in the CPU. Actual CPU speed hit the wall about the time vista was released.
They keep the specs low for the phones --- windows 10 everywhere.
Because there still are some folks who have to use 16-bit software.
Once I had to install a 32-bit XP in a VM for a girl because her teacher made it obligatory for them to use one specific software, which is from the dinosaurs' era.
I'm pretty sure that the limit ensures that you can actually do stuff with the computer, not just run the OS.
It is what it is.
Micro$oft windows is a operating system, is should take care of files, memory and processes.
Why would that need more and more hardware?
On my new shiny hardware I want to put flight simulations with physics simulations.
Windows should split in core OS and GUI, we could call the GUI for a WindowMangager, wouldnt that be cool?
When we start trying to load the OS down with all kinds of things that ought to be done with apps, we end up with a bloated mess, a one-size-fits-none concept that inconveniences everyone equally.
You must not be remembering Windows has had gigabytes of drivers bundled with it in every version I remember since Win2k. I think Windows 7 has roughly 25GB of drivers thrown into it. You know, just in case I should by that printer and want to completely ignore the CD that came in the box and the fact that I have a broadband internet connection.
Mainly because it was touted as an intuitive interface, but it wasn't. It made use of non-obvious gestures and key presses to do everyday tasks. This made it a power user interface, excellent for people who love spending time in the OS instead of in their applications.
Unfortunately that is hardly any people at all. And therefore hardly any people at all liked it.
The minimum requirement for Windows 10 is giving a rat's ass about Windows, period.
More and more people are failing that requirement every day...
Yes... because modern smartphones are much faster than single core 1Ghz desktop CPUs. They're roughly as fast as 3Ghz dual cores
An average smartphone is not comparable to a 1Ghz desktop chip. Eventhough they are newer chips they do not have all the punch that an older desktop chip has. Graphic wise the new smartphones are probably are more powerful though.
We loose a good opportunity for bloat but it enables Google to compete with chromebooks
While your points about desktops and the web are spot-on, not all Linux or for that matter Windows computers are used as desktops, not all desktops are used for browsing the web, and not all desktops that are used for web browsing are used for general-purpose web browsing.
A server, a desktop computer that isn't used for browsing the web, or a desktop computer that is only used to browse the web for certain web sites that work okay with ancient browsers can work fine with "ancient" video drivers, provided of course that the machine doesn't have a bad security profile (e.g. closed-source non-maintained video drivers, sigh). Ancient "vga" or other generic-video drivers should be fine under such scenarios, and some of these drivers are open-source and likely still maintained.
Here are some examples of special-purpose PCs you may actually touch in everyday life:
* ATM machines
* Library card catalog or on-site-only-access library database computers
* Touch-screen kiosks in stores or hotels that by design only let you do certain tasks
* Media players running a general-purpose OS like Linux, BSD, or MS-Windows under the hood
* The list goes on
The list above doesn't even count your home media server, the servers at your workplace, your home router, etc. etc., any one of which may run Windows, Linux, or a similar general-purpose operating system behind the scenes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
OK, so MS has been able to release ever-more-sophisticated OS's for the past 6 years without increasing hardware requirements that would force users to buy new hardware in order to upgrade their software -- and that's a _bad_ thing?? Pretty pathetic attempt, girls. Especially when the competition sells devices (including notebooks!) that force users to buy a new system when a battery dies. Jesus.
Why in the world would you want Microsoft to increase the minimum specs required to run the new OS if the original low specs works just fine? Misleading people to believe they have to have faster and faster CPUs, additional memory, larger hard drives ... what a crock. If the OS works fine with an old Pentium 4 machine, so be it. But don't lie about needing the faster components, right? Let's not forget - Microsoft is in the software business. They want people to put their OS on as many computers as possible. By making their OS backward compatible, GOOD FOR THEM.
CPU speed is so overkill it is ridiculous. Prove to me that a 2nd grade student needs a computer with an i5 3rd gen processor in it. Prove to me that there is ANY advantage to overspending on that type of computer.
I'm of the opinion the Windows min spec is not modest enough. An operating system *Should* have a very modest minimum system spec. This gives software more opportunity to take advantage of that which is left available by the OS... because LINUX!
POS does not need the latest and greatest to function. Those based on that usually interface with a windows server. Power adds up. The newer ones are touch screen. That usually is configured to only work when the GUI is up. Slower CPUs and enough memory are all that is neede to get the job done. You don't need a browser, word processor, pointing device, keyboard and other apps running. But you do need a MS license for each one sold unless your have a linux gurus in your service deptpartment.
Although high end laptops continue to get faster, the mainstream has been stuck at the same level of computing power for a few years now. (The average GPU has improved somewhat since 2014 integrated graphics are better than 2007 integrated graphics, but with a few high end exceptions they are still pitiful.) Instead of more computing power, people have been buying lower price, lower weight, and longer battery life. And some of the latest crop of Windows tablets only have 1GB of RAM because they're pushing for the $100 price point. (Not quite there yet but the Microsoft Store is selling a Toshiba tablet for $119; we'll probably hit $100 by Christmas.)
Another factor is the corporate market. Most enterprises prefer to run the same version of Windows on all their computers; if they make the decision to upgrade they upgrade everybody, except perhaps some specialized systems that can't be upgraded. (I still have one Windows XP system for that reason; it is used to drive a chip programmer that never got drivers for any version of Windows after XP, and never had support for any non-Windows OS. It is now disconnected from the Internet.) They want to be able to install the new OS on their installed base as well as on new systems.
A final factor is the push for improved battery life. Even if your system has a GPU that is capable of rendering fancy visual effects, it will use more power doing that than it will doing flatter rendering. Microsoft has quietly brought back some of the Aero look in the Preview (the taskbar uses semitransparent rendering), but they will likely disable it by default on tablets, and Aero can be done without DX10 in any case. Even if Microsoft were to introduce some fancier transitions that used DX10, those transitions would surely be optional and normally off on systems with power limitations.
Microsoft could ratchet up the system requirements to dual core and DX10 without losing too many people. But the benefit of doing that would be minimal. So long as things like dual core Bay Trail Atoms with 1GB are part of the computing landscape, they can't significantly increase the system requirements. But they can continue to make improvements that will help people with fancier systems; I haven't seen much sign of that in the Technical Preview but Microsoft may be working on things that haven't surfaced yet.
What the current Preview is about is bringing back most of the Windows 7 interface with a few of the best things from 8 mixed in, plus improved tablet and touch support and some under-the-hood work. In my so far limited experience they have succeeded; it's already faster than Windows 7 on a 2007 laptop and it will probably be better still by the time it reaches RTM.
Windows Ten has the same hardware requirements als Windows Vista. Makes you wonder what Microsoft has changed, apart from a couple of new device drivers.
Why not have just good old Windows Classic based upon Windows 7. Charge people for annual support if they want access to updates.
Then they could also offer Windows Du Jour that supports contemporary technology.
Everybody's a winner...
Greed is the root of all evil.
More like it was not a good UI without touch, and you couldn't necessarily avoid it. Metro apps had fixed-size windows, and usually wanted to take the whole screen. Not all apps were available for Metro; Windows ARM tablets had an additional desktop mode just to run Microsoft Office. If W8 had had a "just work like Windows 7, please please please" mode, it would have been a considerable success.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
1. Your smart phone is not more powerful than a 1Ghz Intel core i CPU, or an AMD x86 CPU, or even a Pentium III CPU! Your phone, even if it is a quad core, 1.5ghz, etc., etc, CPU, uses an ARM CPU. These CPU's are meant to be power efficient and not performance oriented. While a 1Ghz ARM core "might" be able to churn out around 1-2.5 ALU instructions a cycle, it is no match for even a Pentium III CPU which at 1Ghz will process around 3.5 BIPS. That's around 3-4 ALU instructions per cycle. The Intel core i series? Around 7 per cycle. The AMD FX series? Around 3-4 per cycle.
2. It's an OS, do you understand this? an "OPERATING SYSTEM". It's only purpose is to be an interface for the user between the applications and the computer itself, ie. the hardware. An OS is supposed to be minimal, and efficient. An OS that requires a minimum of a 1Ghz CPU, and 1GB of RAM is NOT efficient! Mac OS 7.5 use to take up about 20MB of space, and about 2.5MB's of RAM. Windows 3.1? About the same. Somewhere along the line, the industry took a very wrong turn and now we have these extremely bloated OS's now that don't work for squat, and people that expect (the above) from an OS.
I weep for the present and future generation of computer geeks.
Am I the only one that thinks 1ghz and 1gb ram is a lot just for a OS? I guess to teenagers that sounds really slow, but anyone past 30 should remember a time when 1ghz and 1gb ram was a lot. Windows has been bloating for years, glad to see they haven't bloated past 1ghz and 1gb ram.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
My non-Apple computers tend not to last ten years anyway. Something goes wrong, and it's not worth fixing, so I replace it. My Mac Mini is still going strong, although it hit its OS limits a long time ago.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This. The desktop PC CPU spec wars were over about 5+ years ago. With the benefit of hindsight, it seemed to hit this point with the release of the Intel Wolfdale Core2 Duo / AMD K10 Deneb cpus.
After that, there seemed to be little new CPU technology that made desktop computers "seem faster" in great multiple leaps, except for hard-core gamers and other edge cases. However, having 2 or more gig (ideally 4+ gig) of ram seems to be important. For example, I got an Intel E8500 Core2 Duo (what's that... circa 2009?) and maxed it out to 8 gig of ram (motherboard/slot limit).... the thing hardly breaks out in a sweat in Windows 8.1. I don't think I could tell the difference between it and some new i7 thing if they were sitting next to each other doing the same (non-gaming) tasks.
Naturally hard-core gamers want more CPU power, but a lot of the needed grunt comes from the newer and greatest GPUs. For those in an office and/or just internet surfing, anything beyond a RAM-maxed Wolfdale/Deneb is just overkill - reflected in Microsoft's almost static system requirements for Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and beyond.
Awesome! Now less people will have to throw away their existing hardware, thus generating less toxic waste!
I can very much help wondering: we are giving up nothing - or are you saying that the bare operating system *should* consume more than 1 GB of ram and need more than 1GHz of processor to run properly?
Why would I require a dual core processor to run my OS? My OS should require AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE of my system resources so that I can use those resources to do actual work! Are you suggesting my OS should do *something* which would require keeping at least one core busy??
Unless you suggest that I have a dynamic, live-rendered Skyrim wallpaper - why the heck would I need DX10 to draw some stupid windows and buttons??
You tell me - unless you come up with something that we cannot have because of the non-increased specs, I don't see a single reason why it should be a bad thing that people can keep their old hardware and not invest more money into new one just so that they can upgrade their OS because MS ceases to support their old version.
You are making some groundless, wild claims about what there *could* be without even giving a single example for the price of radically harming the evironment with millions of disposed electric garbage - I think you should think about this for a bit more.
More like it was not a good UI without touch, and you couldn't necessarily avoid it.
Of course you could, the only reason to use it was to launch applications if you didn't want to use one of the other 3 ways to launch applications and even then once you were running your applications they didn't use the new UI.
Metro apps had fixed-size windows, and usually wanted to take the whole screen.
Unless you had a touch device you wouldn't even use those programs.
Forced Obsolescence is ridiculous. Microsoft already makes enough money overcharging for what time after time is a mediocre product. Heres a concept: What if instead of forcing users to upgrade their machines and install new versions of their software every year, they made a single unified kernel that was easily updated and a consistent interface that users could keep and customize, and even have some choice in the look, design and behavior, that they could carry over to a new machine when they were ready without any loss or requiring fancy updates and reinstalls, etc. Oh yeah, that would be Linux. But then I guess they couldn't afford to copy and steal all the ideas that everyone else comes up with first and then bastardize them... It takes a lot of victimization to be able to afford to put hundreds of millions of dollars behind something like the surface :(
Its only illegal if you don't get caught
Okay, I couldn't, without third-party addons, use W8 in a way comfortable for me. And, if you're not supposed to use Metro applications (which can be brought up as programs to handle file types, etc.), why was Microsoft pushing its counterpart to the app store for laptops and desktops? Why not have it just aimed at phones and tablets?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Okay, I couldn't, without third-party addons, use W8 in a way comfortable for me.
I guess that means you never use a Mac then. The people who struggled are the people indoctrinated in Windows usage with the start menu.
And, if you're not supposed to use Metro applications (which can be brought up as programs to handle file types, etc.), why was Microsoft pushing its counterpart to the app store for laptops and desktops?
I didn't say you're not supposed to, just that you probably wouldn't. But with the growth of the touchscreen display sector, laptops with touchscreens and convertible tablets you can see why they included it in the desktop version and with it not being particularly appropriate for setups that don't have touchscreens they have alleviated the issue with Continuum in Windows 10.
I have used Macs, Linux boxes, Windows boxes, and other computers. I'm familiar with quite a few user interfaces. The Metro UI is, as far as I can tell, worse than other GUIs I've used. Why does a computer need to come with a tutorial? Other UI experts have looked at it and found problems, so it's not just me and my son.
I have no objection to Metro being included in Windows, as long as I can easily completely avoid it on the desktop and laptop. If Windows 8 had had a mode in which it worked just like Windows 7, only better, it would have been a hit.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
-Dock = Taskbar
...and if you really want...
-Spotlight = Search
-Desktop = Desktop
-Finder = Explorer
-Launchpad = Start Screen
I *mostly* use Windows at work and *mostly* OS X at home and the workflow is the same on both.
Suppose I prefer a Windows 7 workflow on my Windows machine. Unless I install something third-party, I don't get a nice Start Menu. In general, things I use all the time are in the taskbar (equivalent to OSX dock), lesser used things in icons at the edge of the screen, and for everything else I find the Start Menu an efficient means of finding a program even if I don't remember what it's called. (I know about the typing the program name, but if I use a program so infrequently that I don't have an icon going to it I'm not certain to remember the binary name.) I like this better than when I last used OSX.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Suppose I prefer a Windows 7 workflow on my Windows machine. Unless I install something third-party, I don't get a nice Start Menu.
Right, they removed it so if you prefer it then install a 3rd party add on. But given that the start menu doesn't exist on other platforms anybody not totally indoctrinated in use of the start menu is not going to have much trouble. The question is why are these people claiming that Windows 8 is unusable on a site like this? (not that you're doing that) Given the solution to the problem is as easy as installing an addon, a replacement shell, adapting your workflow to something matching other platforms or developing your own start menu replacement?