Every Windows 11 system I’ve used with 8GB of RAM ran like total shit.

8GB should be fine for Windows 11. However, the OS is so bloated that it simply isn't.

Microsoft should fix that.

8GB isn't enough for 3 facebook tabs, regardless of how efficient the underlying OS is.

I'm glad we're in a spot where we stop buying RAM. It means we stop giving them headroom.

I recently went to a large electronics retailer here in Germany and was shocked to see that they’re still selling brand new Windows 11 Laptops with 4GB RAM. Idling at 85% RAM usage.

Not sure if they’re just getting rid of old stock but selling them with Windows 11 at all is kinda criminal.

Fine for what? My 8gb laptop was unusable on win11, swapping even at the empty desktop.

8 GB is NOT fine in Windows 11. I had to install Linux on my father's laptop that has 8G GB so that it becomes useful. Technically speaking because Windows 11 is so bloated, 16 GB should remain the baseline.

Windows XP was initially only capable of addressing a maximum of 4GB of RAM in its first 4 years of release, and I can't think of a single damn thing I want from Windows 11 that XP didn't already give me. How bloated does this bullshit have to be for 8Gb to be the bare minimum?

Translation:

Microsoft admits AI-driven RAM shortage is eating into sales of machines with Windows 11.

Running Linux now with just under 3.5 GB used, running Firefox with 8 tabs, and the Steam Client open because I was gaming a few hours ago. This is on KDE Plasma Desktop, and nothing was ever optimized by myself for RAM efficiency.
This is just how it works out of the box.

Fine for what? One web page in Firefox and the Calculator application?

Yea that should be plenty for all the telemetry, update checks, notification services, and AI slop tooling (Copilot) to run.

You should be fine as long as you don't launch any applications, play any games, or attempt to use a web browser or the rest of the computer in any meaningful way.

We call this the "Jurassic Park Problem" at work. Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.

I have 8gb on my work laptop and I'm at 90% on idle

win2000 ran fine with 64MB of ram and it did everything perfectly. even faster than win11. lmao.

16GB isn't even enough if you need anything at all alongside your outlook, teams and browser

I got 16 gb on my W11 laptop, and I'm regularly bouncing off the 13 gb point where swap/ compression/ whatever kicks in and shit gets slow, doing relatively benign shit like browsing the web, YouTube and Gmail open, and vscode running working on some python shit. On 8 gb I'd probably have to use my phone for everything except vscode to get it to fit. It's not the lightest possible workload, but it shouldn't be slamming swap so regularly.

I just hate that the web browser is setting the minimum requirements for memory for an OS today.

I have 64GB of RAM on my Windows machine and it's barely enough.

I think a lot of PC users are spoiled, to be perfectly honest.

My work PC is an ancient micro Lenovo thing with a Skylake processor and 8GB of RAM, and it runs Windows 11 perfectly adequately. I generally need about 10 Firefox tabs open, as well as various other programs, and the only issue I find is that new Excel instances take a while to load - everything else feels perfectly reasonable. Don't tell anybody at work, but it even managed to play World of Warcraft at low graphics at the same time.

Not that this is a defence of Microsoft.

Absolute bullshit! That is not at all true, at least not until they bother to optimize their OS and software.

They gave up after ram prices are too expensive.