Technology

For reference, that was the year Vista came out with a minimum memory of 512MB, with 1GB suggested.

Chrome running with a single tab on the google homepage eats more RAM than most AAA games of 2007

Yes your old PC can act as a thin client to remote into all this server capacity that we are building out. Just sign up for this subscription for the low price of ~~4.99~~ ~~7.99~~ 15.99 a month

Correct, so now they will move to computers as a cloud service.

They will eventually be forced to

It's a simple supply-demand issue that took 30 years to arrive and will take at least 5 years to solve unless the AI bubble pops a lot sooner to stop the hoarding by big tech cloud companies, Chinese state-backed investment and others who are betting it all on black like a has-been Hollywood actor at a Caesars roulette table on a Saturday night. The US never penalized US tech companies for shuttering the dozen memory plants since the 1990s so they just relied on the Koreans and a few others. Now Korea can't keep up and the US tech companies have been caught with their pants down. While these kinds of people are very bright within their areas of expertise, leading to huge earnings, they're not bright on most business topics and eventually the market shifts and they're struggling.

This is where the tech companies founded in the 1970s-2000s are right now. Their original ideas are long in the tooth at best and about to be disrupted, if not already disrupted. The cash cows are looking a little fatigued. They're looking for a lifeboat to keep the good times going, thinking its AI, just now realizing their industry screwed itself with all of the offshoring but its too late now. They have to once again "fake it until they make it".

They just hope the people providing the capital don't start asking about when the market will accept the higher price points so they can break even. That's a question nobody acknowledges today when it's asked because they know it could sink the boat if it becomes a hot topic of the month on CNBC and Bloomberg.

This. These companies (Microsoft, Google, etc) are using OUR computer's Ram, Hard drive space and CPU time to run their very own Skynets and making us pay for the privilege.

Then it’s time to let them go bankrupt and trust bust them to oblivion

It's the Golden Calf all over again.

Nah. They'll use AI to code everything, and now you need more RAM to continue...

programmers will start being more frugal with their memory usage.

They 100% will.

Windows had started only "certifying" machines with 32gb as "windows ready" because they wanted the headroom to cram on AI features and use what we pay for instead of a data center.

But because no one was buying 32gb machines and a machine without that sticker will end up with Linux....

They just dropped it, and now they'll have to keep optimizing for 16gb instead of just letting everything bloat. If they don't, they risk every entry level machine making people eventually switch to Linux for a much better experience. Windows has to run on entry level or people don't get sucked in, no one converts to windows later in life.

That's a huge deal, if 32gb was the default for windows it would be the default for everything. Every game and design/modeling program would feel safe to assume 32gb was the norm. Like, imagine what chrome would do assuming there's 32gb to play with.

Now they can't, and they'll know requiring 32gb will cut off some possible consumers.

It's not like Windows is the good guys tho, it never should have been 32, and arguably should be 8gb forever, even if it required a lightweight mode. Most people would prefer a super stripped down Windows even with 64gb. Most of the bloat is useless, I could live without any updates after we didn't have to quit to DOS to launch a game.

What happens to all those Stargate RAM wafers, and excess datacenters?

The bigger question is what happens to the world-economy when the largest players bottom out and the companies betting on them are massively downgraded because of their huge investments in a fantasy about eternal growth. Hope everyone is setting aside extra cash; it's gonna make 2008 look like a walk in the park.