Oh no! I won’t be able to run Windows on my new MacBook Pro!
I have 16gb on my M2 Air, and 8gb on my 2014 mini. I’m genuinely surprised at how usable that mini still is. Hell, it’s running Sonoma through OCLP, but it’s only when I boot up the Win11 VM I have installed that it really starts to struggle.
I honestly just made a double pun regarding the new MB Pro with 8gb in the basic configuration and the coming Windows with the 16gb requirement - which both seem strange product decisions with lots of negative customer feedback.
New macbook Pro doesnt even have 16GB?? Do they come with a 32GB SSD too?
AFAIK is the basic configuration for the new M3 MacBook Pro a meager 8gb shared RAM with 512gb SSD for 1999 Euros (in Germany so ymmv).
But the base model M3 MBP is almost an entirely different product to the rest of the MBP lineup.
They really should’ve removed the pro moniker from that sku.
I assume it’s entirely marketing bullshit, whether to say “look how cheap a MBP is!” or to make you think “wow, it’s only a little bit more to get the way better model, what a bargain!”
my first computer was a tandy sensation which has 4mb of ram and a 100mb hard drive
All this will do is push standard users into more expensive machines. Which, well, yeah, that’s the point.
I mean, 16GB? Is anyone who’s aware of RAM needs on a workstation accepting that in the first place? I’d love to run a poll and see who’s running less than 32. 16 was luxurious 15 years ago.
I’m still running 16GB. I built my PC in 2015 and it’s been my gaming/work/dev machine ever since. Have only upgraded GPU and storage.
It is definitely showing its age, but I don’t need to worry about the Windows requirements. My CPU isn’t supported for Windows 11 so I’m sticking with what I’ve got until Windows 10 hits EoL. Then I’ll probably buy a 64GB AMD system and switch to Mint at that point.
I take it you don’t know much about enterprise IT. I guarantee most businesses are running 8-16GB as standard. Where I live an 8GB laptop costs $1400, the equivalent with 16GB costs $1900. And to get 32GB you’re looking at an additional $1600.
Just saying, but… Lenovo ThinkPad E15 gen4, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, for 500€ on last year’s Amazon’s Black Friday… plus 70€ for an additional 32GB RAM stick.
Anyone at “enterprise IT” spending an additional $1600 for 32GB, which takes a whole 10 minutes to install, should be kicked out.
Yes but of course no one wants a clunky-ass 2kg ThinkPad with a 1080p screen. They want a Yoga or Surface Pro. I would like to see you install additional anything in one of those!
An E15 in my country costs $1200 with 8GB soldered-on RAM. Not sure if it has a second memory slot, although I would assume so. But the screen is crap and they weigh twice as much.
Also - who is buying enterprise equipment from Amazon?
They may want whatever, they’ll get what the IT dept gives them based on requirements… 👀
Anyway, an E15 is 1.8Kg, while a Yoga Pro is over 2Kg. The screen is not the best, but perfectly fine for anything other than photo/video work. It does have a SODIMM slot in addition to the soldered RAM, a secondary M.2 2280 slot, and the main NVMe is also an M.2 2242 (right now, the 8GB one goes up to 40GB RAM + 2TB + 16TB NVMe). Only thing it’s missing, is a WWAN slot.
Honestly, the Yoga have better screens, some are smaller and lighter, some have a touchscreen or pen support, or an SD reader… but all similar raw performance, and less upgradeability. The Surface Pro, I’ve heard horror tales about, both from a lack of upgradeability, and difficulty to repair.
who is buying enterprise equipment from Amazon?
Someone who wants it at half price, and yet with full warranty 😉
I may have 128Gb in my current rig (Dell Precision T7610), but if this is the way you’re gonna be bloating Windows 12, imma gonna be running to OpenSUSE or some BSD.
Yes, I use Win10Privacy to lobotomize all of the spyware and cruftware that comes with Windows. But it’s gotta be re-run after every significant Windows update.
Meanwhile, chrome and desktop apps (Electron-based) like Slack, note apps, etc, takes 1GB just to open… Well, tbh I don’t know if they really use physical RAM space, but anyway.
Yes and no.
On modern OSs, files get mapped into RAM, which is a fancy way of saying “it can stay on disk, but it can also be cached in RAM, but the unmodified parts can get discarded out of cache at any moment, and any changes go first to RAM, then get written to disk at some later time”.
The apps also use buffers to hold data, and one of the largest buffers is for the canvas or window display buffer. These have to use actual RAM while the app is running; you can only swap them out to swap/pagefile if you suspend the app… which is doable, but rarely done… otherwise they’ll get swapped back in, the moment the app needs them (which usually is all the time… but some buffers might stay mostly swapped out some of the time).
There is also RAM compression going on (at least on Windows), that can keep mostly empty and/or rarely used buffers all the time “in RAM”, but taking just a fraction of the space.
And totally not for pre-installed junk and bloat and horrible AI and surveillance nonsense, nosiree.
lol how much ram does that need when they’re shipping every bit of data on your computer to their servers to do processing on there?
Why not outsource the power usage and hardware costs to the consumer and just reap the end result?
Meh, Windows itself, even with all the bloat still active, doesn’t need more than 2 Gigs. That’s one of the few issues microsoft isn’t responsible for.
Try using it on a 2 or 4 GB machine. It’s pretty much impossible.
If Microsoft wants more RAM just to do AI shit on my computer, I’d rather have even less just to make sure they cant.
You now understand why I constantly run at 10 bytes below my OS drive’s limit. They cant take consent away if what they want to do is physically impossible. Sure you can delete some temporary files but that’s only going to net you 1GB max. Good fucking luck.
Be careful with what you wish for… if they can’t do it on your computer, then they’ll send your data to the cloud to do it there.
My next OS will be some kind of Linux. I just had to reinstall Windows 11 because it corrupted it’s install after some time. I had to uninstall so much crap and regedit so many thinks just to get it back to where I was before. I don’t want Bing search in my windows search results. I don’t want your stupid widgets and I don’t want your browser or 90% of your default apps. And no I don’t want office 360 or onedrive. So stop forcing it into my face. When Linux gets Plasma 6 and HDR support there is only holding me back my Nvidia GPUs Linux compatibility. While I hah to install windows 11 again I played a lot of games on my Steam Deck! It’s is awesome and only some games with obscure anti cheat don’t run. (well some times they don’t run on windows too)
nvidia opensourced their drivers because of that lapsus kid.
the community is already building a state of the art open driver for nvidia 2xxxx and above.
only a matter of time, but even then nvidia is pretty usable with the proprietary drivers nowadays.
Just saying, but tweaking stuff via regedit is a surefire way to get your Windows install corrupted sooner or later.
dism, sfc… and disabling the preview update channel, are your friends to have a stable Windows install.
If you don’t want Bing results in your search, then use something like Everything to search for files. It’s faster, and will only show you files, all of them.
The widgets you can disable, and with Powertoys even bypass the start menu completely.
Anyone an idea or a link what kind of AI they want to run on people’s machines? Will it add something for the user or just annoy you and add more targeted advertising?
Even as far back as XP/Vista Microsoft has wanted to run the file system as more of an adaptive database than a classical hierarchical file system.
The leaked beta for Vista had this included and it ran like absolute shit, mostly because harddrives are slow and ram was at a premium, especially in Vista as it was such a bloated piece or shit.
NTFS has since evolved to include more and more of these “smart” file system components.
Now they want to go full on with this “smart” approach to the filesystem.
It’ll still be slow and shit, just like it was 2 decades ago.
Even further back, the first attempt was around 1990 and Windows NT.
The beta for Vista with WinFS, was not exactly “leaked”, it was given to developers at a MS conference.
NTFS doesn’t have any of that, they’ve shifted the functionality to the Search Indexer… and it’s what most people use when they hit the Win key and start typing the name of some file.
The second one.
Clippy v.2.
They’re going to make us miss that clueless little bastard.
My next Windows PC doesn’t need any RAM, because I’m not going to need one.
My new PC has 64g ram. But I’m also not using or plan to use windows. Checkmate M$!
But in all seriousness, 8g is like, the foundational minimum these days. Sad tbh. Browsers are so bloated these days. I’m surprised that browsers haven’t become their own OS yet. It kinda feels that way in some environments.
Well, Chrome OS is a thing.
ChromeOS is more of an OS built to optimize a browser though. Its close though.
Phones are coming with 12Gb and Apple are still only putting 8Gb in their ‘pro’ line.
🙃
Does it really matter though that iPhone has less RAM? Their architecture is super efficient and can get by with less than android bloat.
Oh not their phones. Their $1799 14” MacBook Pro.
₼ac฿ook ₽ro
Going to need 32 GB of RAM or more plus a GPU with 48 GB of VRAM just to run Win12 w/ AI subsystem so you have enough headroom to run a program or two
RAM is cheap, and even if you’re just doing absolute basic shit your current PC will work better with 16GB of RAM (also looking at you here, Apple). If it’s not a phone you’re buying don’t get anything with less than 16GB.
I’d like a phone with 16GB of RAM… using a 3GB one right now, and between a Lemmy app, a browser, and maybe some other app, it keeps running out of RAM and closing the keyboard app, which is a real nuisance.
On a phone the additional power draw of larger modules can be an issue - plus phones are designed to freeze background apps to conserve memory, so you can get away with less.
I currently have 6GB in my phone, which mostly is fine. In a few situations I’d have preferred having 8, though. 4 or less hasn’t made sense for a few years now.
Not sure how much of a difference would that make to power draw. There are already some phones with 12GB of RAM, and most of the power still goes to lighting up the screen.
My main gripe is that they all come paired with some fancy cameras which drive up the costs. I’d rather have a basic camera and even a lower resolution screen, with a ton of RAM, than the other way around.
I guess it depends on how you are using your phone. If you’re mostly using it between charges (possibly replacing other devices) it indeed doesn’t matter. If you care about standby time, or use it as music player or similar tasks more than active use it does matter.
RAM can also enter a low power mode:
A 64GB laptop configured with two 32GB DDR4 modules consumes less than 4.6 watts (W) in active mode and less than 1.4W when idle
DDR5 uses about 20% less power, so for 16GB you’re looking at less than 0.3W… likey way less, since a Samsung S24 Ultra with 12GB of RAM claims up to 95 hours “while listening to music”. That’s on a 5000mAh battery, or 18Wh, meaning less than 0.2W for “CPU + 12GB RAM + Bluetooth + storage”.
It is not just RAM. They also require special hardware/chip to run ANN
I do have 16GB RAM, but that’s not because I wanted to run just the OS and without a game.
Already switched to linux
I have 32 gigs of ram and this shit is going to make me switch to Linux as well.
I do not want an OS that demands half of my processing power just to run in the background. I see absolutely no reason for an OS to demand 2-4 gigs of ram, let alone up to 16