As a data point my newest phone (Nexus 4) is a 1.5 GHz quad-core with 2 GB of RAM and a GPU good for OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL 1.2.
Except for hard drive size and bandwidth, it's the same or better than the dual core laptop I had 5 years ago.
Except for hard drive size and bandwidth, it's the same or better than the dual core laptop I had 5 years ago.
What class of applications (from 5 years ago) would have inherent performance issues with Nexus4-class hardware (assuming a real external display and hard drive were added)?
Also, it occurs to me that Surface RT is largely Windows 8 and Office running on very comparable hardware. I have a Surface RT, it runs this stuff quite well.
That's the use. If it runs Windows 8 without complaint, you can generally do the things that running Windows 8 allows you to do.
I think we've all seen a slow desktop before. Windows generally has minimum requirements well below that which you would want to have for serious productivity work. An OS has to leave some RAM and storage space for the user's apps.
People sometimes take liberties with claims about what runs on what, but generally do follow that guideline.