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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.
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.
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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.
You do realize that Windows uses free RAM for filesystem cache since Vista, right (just like Linux has been doing for many years before)? The amount of RAM "used", as reported in Task Manager, is basically meaningless.
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.