If it was "clutter free", it would not need 64GB. It might even work with 4GB or less.

"Our new product is our old product with fewer kicks in the face."

The goal, really, is to cut the crud out of Windows to create a more Linux-like experience.

LOL. I'll just keep using Linux, thank you very much. Great article though:

[…] demanding 64GB of RAM in the age of the RAMaggedon seems inexcusable. (Especially because Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI and its overall AI push is a big reason memory prices have skyrocketed.)

requires 64gb ram

Microslop must be getting tired of all the winning.

/s, obviously

Clearly, the focus is on local AI development — a timely move as cloud AI token costs start to rise.

AI token costs are only rising for people with low AI proficiency who compensate for that by just using expensive models for everything. For others, the costs are dropping quite a lot, largely thanks to Chinese models (GLM, Kimi, Qwen, etc.)

The goal, really, is to cut the crud out of Windows to create a more Linux-like experience.

but

for powerful developer hardware with 64GB of RAM and gobs of memory bandwidth.

????

64GB of RAM to use it.

Does that mean it does not run on my beloved Thinkpad X220 with 4GB?

Looks like I am stuck with running Debian 13 on it.

Fun fact, at $currentwork there are two true believers in AI and somehow they managed to procure me a laptop for home office which weights in roughly 9 kilograms - a bit more than six times as heavy as my 12 year old X220. Must be the battery which is needed to power the NVidia graphics card.

You believed Microslop once, that's on them. You believed Microslop twice, that's on you.

You need 64 GB or RAM to use it? Seems like it's just a marketing gimmick to find dumb developers who can afford 64GB of RAM in the first place. Kind of like that "I am Rich" app....

Clearly, the focus is on local AI development — a timely move as cloud AI token costs start to rise.

This is called burying the lede.

If Microsoft knows this cloud-based AI thing is a bust and people will be moving to local models that are not controlled by Microsoft or OpenAI or Anthropic, then it's only a few months before Satya tells his investors buddies and the bubble pops.

It’s called zenith because it only gets worse from here

Is this their follow up to the wildly successful Project Test Everything In Production?

Zero details about what clutter they're going to remove...

E: Reading the original Windows release does not mention anything at all about decluttering. They do call it "distraction-free" at one point, but no elaboration on what that means...

Lmao

I’m sure the event viewer, resource monitor, etc will support hidpi with this right and it’s not just gonna be another Ui layer painted on top of all the old ones like a shitty apartment where you can cut the wall and count the layers of paint