On Tuesday, Microsoft announced its Windows 10 OS for desktop computers. The OS blends many features from Windows 7 and Windows 8 together, like the Start menu. The Start menu will show a list of Windows programs along with the search bar will also have Live Tiles like in Windows 8. Surprisingly, the OS will not require more computer power than Windows 8 currently do.
This was confirmed by Frank X. Shaw, a lead communications for Microsoft. While responding to a tweet from The Wall Street Journal which stated that “if you were planning to buy a Windows 8 PC, don’t,” Shaw responded by saying that the idea of not buying a Windows 8 machine now because Windows 10 is coming is foolish because Windows 10 has the same hardware system requirements as Windows 8.
There are the system requirements for Windows 8.1:
- Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2 (more info)
- RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
- Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
Not that bad that although Windows 10 will come with more great features and improvements, it will not require users to have better hardware than their previews OS (Windows 8). But is Shaw correct by saying that getting a Windows 8 machine right now should not be a problem if you want to upgrade to Windows 10 later in the future? Nope. Even if you exceed the hardware requirements for Windows 10, your computer will not run Windows 10 so good if the manufacturer don’t update the drivers. Apart of meeting the system requirements, the OS will have to be compatible with the drivers used by the machine. This is a problem many people that bought a Windows 8 machine were having when wanting to upgrade to Windows 7 – their system had/exceeded the required hardware to run the OS but compatible components driver were never released for Windows 7 by their manufactures.