If you’re stuck on an old PC running Windows 7 you don’t need to upgrade your hardware ( Graphic Card upgrade at least may be required) as Microsoft officially confirms at the D9 Conference that systems running windows 7 can run Windows 8 too when Windows 7 minimum system requirements are met.
With failed Vista’s system requirements lot of users upgraded their hardware or to purchased new PCs, Microsoft won’t taking a chance now with system requirements for their next Operating System Windows 8. So Windows 7’s minimum system requirements are suffice for Windows 8’s . So all users running Windows 7 will be able to switch to Windows 8 easily without any hardware change or upgrades.
Here are Windows 8 Hardware requirements (Windows 7 minimum system requirements)
- 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
However Windows 8 demands for high end new graphic card with above DirectX 11 version may be of DirectX 12 when Windows 8 become available. There is no official statement though on Direct X 12 from Microsoft and you can still run Windows 8 with old graphic card but may miss enhancements brought by Windows 8 with DirectX enhancements.
Windows 8 run from Small tablet devices to large desktops with/without keyboard and mouse . Users may lost benefits of touch technology if they don’t buy tablets with touch screens and can still run Windows 8 on their old PCs.
Windows 7 likes a light blue color. But, Windows 8 seems to be having a green color! An interesting fact. Windows 8 required 1GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, 20GB disk space, DirectX 9 graphics card. We can get away with 1GB of RAM on 32-bit systems.