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Comment by octopoc | Hacker News Reader

Comparing tech specs for Windows 10 vs 11: they doubled RAM requirements from 2GB to 4GB. They tripled storage requirements from 20GB to 64GB. Minimum CPU speed stays the same. That's comparing 64-bit vs 64-bit, the increased specs are even more extreme when considering Windows 10 32-bit.

Windows 10 system reqs [1]:

- 1 GHz or better processor

- RAM: 1 GB of 32-bit OS. 2 GB for 64 bit OS.

- Storage: 16 GB for 32 bit OS and 20 GB for 64-bit OS

- Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.o driver

- Display 800×600

Windows 11 system reqs [2]:

- 1 GHz 64-bit processor

- RAM: 4GB

- Storage: 64GB

- Graphics card: DirectX 12 or later with WDDM 2.0 driver

- Display: High definition (720p) display that is greater than 9” diagonally, 8 bits per color channel

- Internet connection (Windows 11 Home edition)

[1] https://www.technologytips.com/windows-system-requirements/

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...

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> They tripled storage requirements

> Storage: 16 GB for 32 bit OS and 20 GB for 64-bit OS

Though in reality those storage requirements are incorrect for current Win10. You can't fully update the OS in that small a space, at least not without some technical hacking that the average user is not going to care for. And that is before installing anything else.

32Gb should be considered the minimum for Win10 currently IMO (maybe 24Gb at a push) so the really requirements have only doubled and hopefully in that they've included much more wiggle room (so the new requirement is “to run well with common apps and some data” rather than “to operate at all”) meaning this is not comparing like for like.

Also having run Win10 on 2Gb some time ago and finding that painful, I doubt a fully updated instance will operate acceptably at all in that little.

Just a nitpick, but Gb is usually used in networking & storage to mean "gigabit", which is an eighth of a GB, or "gygabyte"

Not to mention that these are frequently mixed up with non-SI units GiB and Gibit that are multiples of 1024 instead of 1000.

Storage size units are confusing =)

The arcane versions of those units have meaning only within the circle of people that actually understand them. Which makes them fairly useless other than for the purpose of being pedantic, wowing or misleading people. For the laymen, kilo means 1000, mega means 1000000 and giga means 1000000000. Having gamed on a machine when I was young that only had 64 * 1024 * 8 bits, I can appreciate the order of magnitudes here. Slightly over 0.5 megabit. But still. Who actually cares when a mobile phone might transmit that in a few ms (i.e. a few thousandths of a second).

I've seen a lot of people have a hard time with the difference between GB and Gb, so I'm always happy to explain.

In this case there's no possible confusion, but I figure it can't hurt to know which is which =)

Cheers

> - Internet connection (Windows 11 Home edition)

Does this signal the end of Microsoft account-less logins?

Yes, Windows 11 Home will require an internet connection and Microsoft account on first startup.

Any idea yet what happens to those of us upgrading from Win 10 Home with a local account? Is this signaled before we finish the upgrade process or do we just get locked out?

How does that work on holidays? "Just" use mobile data?

It only requires an internet connection to setup. You can login with an Microsoft/'Online' account even when offline.

Unless you have pro, yeah.

Those requirements don't strike me as egregious. I think the only issue will be that cryptographic generator that motherboards need. I think it's the TPM chip?

It sounds pretty reasonable for modern systems. Also considering that they likely want to avoid things that barely run it. I don't think one should even buy less than this hardware for any productive use.

Agreed. The last time Microsoft tried to run on underpowered hardware, we had vista. It was a solid platform but was a big resource jump from XP

I wonder how well it will run on the minimum requirements.

Try running Windows 10 either directly or as a VM on a hard drive, it is painfully slow. Things like installing updates will just take hours to days and antivirus scans will make the system unusable. IMO, Windows basically requires a SSD.

There's a 32 bit version of Windows 10? It can't even use a full 4GB of RAM

it can, just not all in the same process

PAE works surprisingly well

PAE can't be used in consumer Windows versions (unless you install 3rd party kernel patches)

  HIMEM.SYS

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