this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Not sure why it would be unexpected? 8.1 was not a good OS from a UI perspective, but it was the last version before Microsoft went all in on making Windows a service and not a product you paid to use.
They still had the incentive to make the OS better and faster. I remember videos from Microsoft at the time showing how fast Windows 8 could get to the desktop compared to 7. They don't really even try to work on stuff like that anymore.
Windows 8 also had to run on atom CPUs with dire CPU performance and even more dire memory configs. So even once it was booted it needed to be relatively slim and quick. I actually preferred it at the time because it was faster than 7.
I miss the Intel Atom, not because I wanted to use it, but because of the positive impact it had on big tech and software bloat. I wish we could bring it back, but it seems nowadays, even Chromebooks have 16 GB of RAM and an i5.
That is extremely far from the truth. Yes, there are a handful of Chromebook with such specifications, but the vast majority has an underpowered ARM chip and 4gb of ram
Current RAM shortage will bring good old days back :)
For Linux maybe, MS is part of the data center funding circle jerk and doesn’t want you to compute anywhere they can’t scrape it for training data.
Yes, but computers are still made and computers need ram
The atom is only gone in name. It’s now just “intel processor”. The N100 CPUs are in a ton of neat machines. And the E cores of Intel CPUs are just Atom cores.
Those 2 in 1 baytrail laptops were so underpowered, but damn, they're so cool
I actually really liked 8.1, preferred it to 7 once I got used to the Start Screen. Surprisingly well designed, actually found myself preferring the menu over 7's
10 had the best start menu in my opinion, but the quality was just an ever advancing downward spiral.
Now, I can't even stand it, deal with it at work as much as I have to, but at home, the only Windows machine left is only still on it because simulator peripherals are a pain to get working right on Linux sometimes, so my dedicated simulator machine still uses that, but it's used for nothing else
Windows 8 was where Microsoft went all-in on optimizing Windows to run on low-power tablets to compete with the iPad. It's mostly remembered for the terrible tablet-first full-screen "start menu", but also continued the work to trim away all the Vista bloat that had started with Windows 7 (where the motivation was to make it work on netbooks so they could finally stop shipping XP)
The fuck?? Vista predates Win7, that sentence makes no sense
Windows 7 was based on Vista, and started the job of trimming away Vista's bloat, which 8 continued.
Aha, well it's a very ambiguous phrasing that is used.
Ambiguous, yes; very ambiguous, though, sounds like you're preemptively dodging any blame for misreading :P
Could be phrased better but it makes sense to me
You're getting downdooted, but I was stuck on rereading that nonsensical sentence, as well, and I'm glad it was clarified.
The underlying work on Win 8 was really good... Just not the front end