I assume it’s entirely marketing bullshit, whether to say “look how cheap a MBP is!” or to make you think “wow, it’s only a little bit more to get the way better model, what a bargain!”
I have 16gb on my M2 Air, and 8gb on my 2014 mini. I’m genuinely surprised at how usable that mini still is. Hell, it’s running Sonoma through OCLP, but it’s only when I boot up the Win11 VM I have installed that it really starts to struggle.
I honestly just made a double pun regarding the new MB Pro with 8gb in the basic configuration and the coming Windows with the 16gb requirement - which both seem strange product decisions with lots of negative customer feedback.
Wow! I’m surprised that everyone is so surprised. Windows resource requirements - especially the RAM - have always grown exponentially between major versions. Remember that we started with some 16MB RAM. They have consistently demanded hardware that completely obsoletes the hardware in the market that can run the previous generation of Windows.
Windows is the best example of a software that always manages to completely nullify or even negate the Moore’s law.
Unfortunately they don’t ship to norway (or have a norwegian layout available). But would really like one if/when they do. Not in a rush to get a new laptop now though. I’ll keep framework in mind when its time for a new one.
This goes two ways, everyone with less ram will probably don’t know about Linux and just lose their laptop (not upgradable ones) and: new built laptops will have more ram and better CPUs. And guessing with the windows handheld industry this also boosts them. But it’s gonna be a big shame people just abandoning their tech because of not enough knowledge.
This is like people abandoning a stick shift and rigid frames/chasses for modern automatic/CVT and and unibody with crumple zones. The latter are complicated, expensive, and inefficient - but substantially more forgiving to the average driver who merely wants to get from A to B with the minimum amount of effort. Linux will be there for people who choose to dedicate hundreds of hours a year to the hobby of computers. For everyone else who doesn’t want to open their laptop to replace the keyboard, update their wireless card, and clean or replace the system fans and solder in a new power connector, buying a new laptop with the extra horsepower (to overcome the code creep) will offer them all those things at a price cheaper than even taking them to the corner repair shop to get the mechanical failures fixed.
That’s a bit hyperbolic. You’re talking as if it’s still early 2000s. Many Linux distributions have very good user experience for beginners and better out-of-the-box device driver support than even Windows.
I choose one of those niche distributions since I have advanced requirements. But I have observed a steady decline in hardware-related issues over the years. In fact, Linus Torvalds confirms this in an interview.
Linux distributions are a viable alternative to Windows these days. But what keeps people away from it is misinformation and FUD like these.
Many Linux distributions have very good user experience for beginners
I 100% agree. The issue isn’t beginners, it’s people who already know windows, and only windows. They’d be just as lost switching to OSX. Kids pick up chromebooks easily, but most adults - the ones who have 5-8 year old machines with only 8GB - are completely lost. I tried to get my mother onto LibreOffice (okay, Open Office…it’s been that long) and it lasted less than a week and one panicked old-lady newsletter deadline. She was utterly lost, and no amount of help would get her out. To be fair, she gets lost when her phone updates to the newest major OS revision.
I choose one of those niche distributions since I have advanced requirements.
I chose windows for the same reason - specialized industry where nearly all tools are written for Windows. I have $15k in software, $200k in setup and procedures, and $100-200k in training I would have to redo to switch to linux, and while that was happening I would have zero income, so double those numbers for net losses. That’s assuming I could even find perfect analogs in the linux world, which is unlikely, and that I was willing to receive and send non-standard files to all of my colleagues. I could consider Wine/Proton, but then I’d have to learn it or risk losing $2000/day plus the cost of tracking down repairs if anything (like an update) broke a critical piece of software. It simply not worth the financial risk.
Plausibily, they could be trying to dictate the minimum standard for budget laptops, win11 doesn’t really need a TPM, it’s in the minimum spec so that every laptop is forced to have one.
The article mentions AI. 16gigs feels far too little to run a LLM of respectable size so I wonder what exactly this means? Feels like no one is gonna be happy about a 16gig LLM (high RAM usage and bad AI features)
I may have 128Gb in my current rig (Dell Precision T7610), but if this is the way you’re gonna be bloating Windows 12, imma gonna be running to OpenSUSE or some BSD.
Yes, I use Win10Privacy to lobotomize all of the spyware and cruftware that comes with Windows. But it’s gotta be re-run after every significant Windows update.
I have 32 gigs of ram and this shit is going to make me switch to Linux as well.
I do not want an OS that demands half of my processing power just to run in the background. I see absolutely no reason for an OS to demand 2-4 gigs of ram, let alone up to 16
My new PC has 64g ram. But I’m also not using or plan to use windows. Checkmate M$!
But in all seriousness, 8g is like, the foundational minimum these days. Sad tbh. Browsers are so bloated these days. I’m surprised that browsers haven’t become their own OS yet. It kinda feels that way in some environments.
All this will do is push standard users into more expensive machines. Which, well, yeah, that’s the point.
I mean, 16GB? Is anyone who’s aware of RAM needs on a workstation accepting that in the first place? I’d love to run a poll and see who’s running less than 32. 16 was luxurious 15 years ago.
I take it you don’t know much about enterprise IT. I guarantee most businesses are running 8-16GB as standard. Where I live an 8GB laptop costs $1400, the equivalent with 16GB costs $1900. And to get 32GB you’re looking at an additional $1600.
Just saying, but… Lenovo ThinkPad E15 gen4, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, for 500€ on last year’s Amazon’s Black Friday… plus 70€ for an additional 32GB RAM stick.
Anyone at “enterprise IT” spending an additional $1600 for 32GB, which takes a whole 10 minutes to install, should be kicked out.
Yes but of course no one wants a clunky-ass 2kg ThinkPad with a 1080p screen. They want a Yoga or Surface Pro. I would like to see you install additional anything in one of those!
An E15 in my country costs $1200 with 8GB soldered-on RAM. Not sure if it has a second memory slot, although I would assume so. But the screen is crap and they weigh twice as much.
Also - who is buying enterprise equipment from Amazon?
They may want whatever, they’ll get what the IT dept gives them based on requirements… 👀
Anyway, an E15 is 1.8Kg, while a Yoga Pro is over 2Kg. The screen is not the best, but perfectly fine for anything other than photo/video work. It does have a SODIMM slot in addition to the soldered RAM, a secondary M.2 2280 slot, and the main NVMe is also an M.2 2242 (right now, the 8GB one goes up to 40GB RAM + 2TB + 16TB NVMe). Only thing it’s missing, is a WWAN slot.
Honestly, the Yoga have better screens, some are smaller and lighter, some have a touchscreen or pen support, or an SD reader… but all similar raw performance, and less upgradeability. The Surface Pro, I’ve heard horror tales about, both from a lack of upgradeability, and difficulty to repair.
who is buying enterprise equipment from Amazon?
Someone who wants it at half price, and yet with full warranty 😉
I’m still running 16GB. I built my PC in 2015 and it’s been my gaming/work/dev machine ever since. Have only upgraded GPU and storage.
It is definitely showing its age, but I don’t need to worry about the Windows requirements. My CPU isn’t supported for Windows 11 so I’m sticking with what I’ve got until Windows 10 hits EoL. Then I’ll probably buy a 64GB AMD system and switch to Mint at that point.
Meanwhile, chrome and desktop apps (Electron-based) like Slack, note apps, etc, takes 1GB just to open... Well, tbh I don't know if they really use physical RAM space, but anyway.
On modern OSs, files get mapped into RAM, which is a fancy way of saying “it can stay on disk, but it can also be cached in RAM, but the unmodified parts can get discarded out of cache at any moment, and any changes go first to RAM, then get written to disk at some later time”.
The apps also use buffers to hold data, and one of the largest buffers is for the canvas or window display buffer. These have to use actual RAM while the app is running; you can only swap them out to swap/pagefile if you suspend the app… which is doable, but rarely done… otherwise they’ll get swapped back in, the moment the app needs them (which usually is all the time… but some buffers might stay mostly swapped out some of the time).
There is also RAM compression going on (at least on Windows), that can keep mostly empty and/or rarely used buffers all the time “in RAM”, but taking just a fraction of the space.
I love to bash MS, but this feels like an industry-wide trend to /never/ care about optimizing beyond the bar of “typical specs of new devices in rich countries”. I’m guessing it’s just to limit labor costs, and computers are less-rapidly-improving than the 90s/00s?
Browser canvas is one of the worst culprits: it has to keep a buffer with an uncompressed bitmap several screens in size.
Old browsers used to keep a single screen worth of canvas buffer, then redraw stuff as you scrolled… which made it a horrible experience. You can still find some of that with “clever” web designs where they replace fonts or move things dynamically as you scroll.
Then you have websites with “infinite scroll” that just keep increasing the canvas buffer size more and more and more, to infinity and beyond… and people wonder why their Facebook or Reddit tabs use so much RAM.
@Fizz true. My PC came with 4 GB originally. It was a pain once I opened the browser or Discord (which I usually do). Upgraded to 12 and no longer have any issue, at least on the current distro.
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