By Martin Jansen, Owner of Jansen-PCINFO
Microsoft has been busy advertising their “new” operating system, Windows 11. At best these ads are misleading. We understand that an operating system has three main functions:
- manage the computer’s resources, such as the central processing unit, memory, disk drives, and printers,
- establish a user interface, and
- execute and provide services for applications software.
Microsoft inflates the importance of the operating system in two ads recently seen on network TV. One ad shows three guys discussing gaming while using Windows 11. They brag how fast the games are to load and how the graphics are great. Another ad shows how great it is to video process on this new computer with Windows 11.
Both gaming and video processing calls for some pretty high end hardware. CPUs need to be in the Intel i7 (or AMD Ryzen 7) and higher. Memory has to be at least 12 GB or higher. Graphic chips also need to be the best available on laptops. All this hardware costs between $1500 and $3000. Generally, the more is paid, the better the computer.
So, is it Windows 11 or the hardware that makes gaming and video processing so great? Yes, the operating system plays a small part in providing the services for applications to run, but it is the hardware along with software used that dictates the user experience, not the OS.
Try to run Windows 11 (if you can) on a lower end system and gaming becomes difficult – by lowering frame rates – or impossible. Video editing takes hours to process instead of minutes.
By rights Microsoft should have a disclaimer on these ads that user experience will vary depending on the capability of the computer shown. Microsoft would rather mislead the viewer into thinking that Windows 11 is the best operating system for all computers and users. I don’t think so.
PS. If you are trying to figure out who the little girl in the top graphic is, she is from the Monsters Inc. movie and her name is Boo.