There was a time when buying a PC felt… rational. 8GB of RAM got the job done, 16GB felt like a power move, and anything beyond that was reserved for people doing genuinely heavy work. That balance existed because software respected hardware. Today, that balance has quietly collapsed, and Microsoft seems perfectly okay with it. Microsoft The company’s since-pulled guidance, casually positioning 16GB as the baseline and 32GB as the “no worries” zone, wasn’t just a recommendation. It’s a shift in responsibility. Because nothing about modern hardware suggests we suddenly need double the memory for the same everyday tasks. DDR5 memory is faster, more efficient, and more capable than anything we’ve had in the past. On paper, systems should feel smoother, more responsive, and more efficient. Instead, users are being nudged into upgrading just to maintain the same level of comfort they had years ago. And that’s where the frustration kicks in.…