[paulmd]

Thing is, OS bloat has finally ground to a halt. Win8.1 wasn't really any slower than 7, and Win10 is actually faster in my experience. So really, you don't need a stronger machine today than you did five years ago. Any perceived slowdown is just the result of malware, fragmentation, and DLL buildup - refresh the OS and maybe install an SSD and they're fine.

I'm using a laptop from 2010 with an i7-720QM and an SSD, and it's perfectly snappy. I frequently let it do light encoding tasks while I'm using my desktop.

[atonse]

Partly. Yes, the operating systems feel faster, but they are all relying more on GPUs for their rendering. And one way cheap Windows PCs keep their costs down is by using cheap integrated GPUs that are quite underpowered.

I use Windows 10 on in VMWare every day at 4k resolution on my retina macbook pro. It feels a bit sluggish, but I know I'm pushing the limits of VM graphics on a laptop with that resolution. But I can only imagine that a computer that's 6-7 years old would start to struggle graphically in Windows 10.