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#270
No, it's not even in the ballpark. Vista had higher system requirements but that's because it had a much more robust kernel, a brand new driver framework, much higher demanding visuals and just generally, a lot more background processes going on. THAT was demanding but even that was justified with higher CPU and RAM requirements, also graphics if you wanted more than the basic windows retro theme which was still available.
It was not very well optimized, it was painfully slow with 1G of RAM, even with 2G, but with Windows 7 they got it right.
A jump in RAM requirements from Windows 10's 2G (x64) to 4G could be justified in my opinion. I can hardly imagine any system working with less than 4G nowadays. Even 4 is so slow, 8 is barely enough for power users.
I upgraded to 16G and it is a dream. No loading times. I did use SSDs before but the additional RAM makes it way better. SuperFetch at it's finest.
But TPM? Come on, that's not even a required feature. BitLocker and stuff needs it but besides... not so much. Especially not version 2.0. It is obviously a testing requirement for this internal build. It is wrong to make assumptions on that.
And let's not forget that this prerelease leaked edition allegedly runs just fine without a TPM. You just have to deploy the image manually. (like, put it inside a Windows 10 installer to disable the check for TPM)
WHY they have implemented a check for a TPM as a requirement in the installer is quite interesting though. MY idea is that this will not be enforced for existing computers, but only for new OEM prebuilt systems that said the new PCs that will ship with Windows 11 *or whatever it will be called*, will have TPM2.0 by default and the OS will be encrypted by default with BitLocker, or something similar. This would greatly enhance user security but also cause a lot of pain for users who lose their keys, passwords etc... Making Microsoft accounts mandatory to set up a new installation on a Windows 11-certified PC could get around this issue though. The key could easily be saved into the MS account much like it is done today.
It would be, what, just more forced than it is today. That is the main reason I can see why there is a TPM requirement. I can also imagine a next generation password/identity lock feature which could store all your passwords, login credentials locally and the TPM2.0 would help with keeping that vault locked.
Combine that with a strong login password, enforced secure boot, disabled alternative boot options and maybe some next-level OS integrity checking on boot up (perhaps a read-only system partition much like EroFS on android), it would become more difficult to retrieve passwords from a PC unless they are able to log in properly.
You do realize that everything you listed was the *exact* reason I said that as a response to the post I responded to, right?
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