With DRAM shortages and soaring prices over the past year, more new PCs are limited to 16GB of memory, or even reverting to the 8GB standard from several years ago. The poor market conditions have forced Microsoft to change its stance, promising a fast-responsive version of Windows 11 for devices with 8GB of RAM, expected to roll out as early as the end of this year, while also emphasizing that 8GB of memory is sufficient for smooth operation.
According to Windows Latest, although Microsoft is optimizing Windows for devices with 8GB of memory, this does not include Copilot+ features.
Recently, Lenovo announced that its upcoming IdeaPad Vibe laptops will feature AMD Ryzen AI 300/400 series processors, offering configurations with 8GB and 16GB of RAM. Models with less than 16GB of memory are explicitly labeled as "Non-Copilot," meaning they do not support AI features. Since these devices use soldered memory that cannot be upgraded, it will be impossible to add more RAM in the future to enable support. Many users likely don't mind this much, as Windows 11 has many areas needing improvement that take priority over Copilot+ features.
Years of neglect and stagnation have made Windows bloated, inefficient, and messy. Combined with the currently somewhat dire storage market conditions, customer dissatisfaction with Microsoft has reached a tipping point. Recent reports indicate that the built-in Weather app in Windows 11 consumes 1GB of memory immediately upon launch, with peak usage reaching up to 1.6GB during operation. This means that on devices with 16GB or even 8GB of RAM, virtual memory usage could be triggered.
In comparison, macOS's native Weather app is just a single native process, consuming around 250MB of memory—only one-fifth of what Microsoft's equivalent uses.