this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
518 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
87469 readers
3149 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
About the only upside to this that I can think of is that maybe, just maybe, programmers will start being more frugal with their memory usage. Everything else just sucks.
They 100% will.
Windows had started only "certifying" machines with 32gb as "windows ready" because they wanted the headroom to cram on AI features and use what we pay for instead of a data center.
But because no one was buying 32gb machines and a machine without that sticker will end up with Linux....
They just dropped it, and now they'll have to keep optimizing for 16gb instead of just letting everything bloat. If they don't, they risk every entry level machine making people eventually switch to Linux for a much better experience. Windows has to run on entry level or people don't get sucked in, no one converts to windows later in life.
That's a huge deal, if 32gb was the default for windows it would be the default for everything. Every game and design/modeling program would feel safe to assume 32gb was the norm. Like, imagine what chrome would do assuming there's 32gb to play with.
Now they can't, and they'll know requiring 32gb will cut off some possible consumers.
It's not like Windows is the good guys tho, it never should have been 32, and arguably should be 8gb forever, even if it required a lightweight mode. Most people would prefer a super stripped down Windows even with 64gb. Most of the bloat is useless, I could live without any updates after we didn't have to quit to DOS to launch a game.
At this point i don't see why we would need more RAM for basic OS or web usage tbh.
Like we’ve hit a point where things are covered. Obviously this won’t stop capitalists from doing capitalist bullshit though… and bloat is a thing.
Not going to disagree, but "web usage" is basically everything. You can literally run an entire desktop operating system from 2007 on a virtual machine emulated in JavaScript in your browser now.