Windows 8 to have the same system requirements as Windows 7

One of the main reasons a lot of people didn’t upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista was mainly due to the high system requirements needed to run the operating system. It looks like Microsoft has learnt from their mistakes and has decided to not let history repeat itself. It probably also wants to avoid the whole “Vista Capable lawsuit” that Microsoft got in trouble for when it promoted PCs and laptops as “Vista Capable” when they could only run the Basic version of the operating system.

Microsoft has confirmed that the system requirements for the next version of Windows 8 will not be higher than those of Windows 7. In fact, it could remain the same as Windows 7′s requirements, or go even lower. The current requirements for Windows 7 are as follows: a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of hard disk space, and DirectX 9 graphics – which is pretty much what most smartphones have today, and what most computers specs today supersede.

But while Windows 8 will be able to run on our current computers, the experience will be scaled – so you can probably expect a more impressive experience if you’re running Windows 8 on a top-of-the-line PC: ”We’ve also built intelligence into Windows 8 so that it can adapt to the user experience based on the hardware of the user. So, whether you’re upgrading an existing PC, or buying a new one, Windows will adapt to make the most of that hardware”.