I'm not sure whether you were aware that almost every major Windows release has required significant new hardware purchases? Corporate IT usually delays rolling

I'm not sure whether you were aware that almost every major Windows release has required significant new hardware purchases? Corporate IT usually delays rolling out each new Windows (preferable, but senior management gets impatient), but that just spreads the increased TCO over the hardware refresh cycle. 2006: Vista premium required new hardware because it required WDDM1.0, and the first cards to support it were the NVidia 8800's [1] [2] and ATI R520 core [3]. Note the whole "Vista capable" fiasco [1] [5], hence Vista premium is the relevant point. Windows 7 hardware requirements were the same as Windows Vista. 2012: Windows 8 requires at least 8 GB of RAM [4] even though Microsoft claims it has the same requirements as Vista (1 GB RAM). That also means the 32-bit version of 8 is crippled from the start. UEFI Secure Boot, also "not a requirement," will increase the hardware TCO for IT departments purchasing machines meant to have Windows 7 – they first have to disable Secure Boot. It's understandable that machines from 2006 will not still be around in 2012, but Microsoft is definitely the cause of the increased hardware TCO. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/vista-users-frustrations-with-nvidia-come-to-a-head/405 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/vista-users-frustrations... [2] http://www.anandtech.com/show/2116 http://www.anandtech.com/show/2116 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R520 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R520 [4] http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/57536-installing-windows-8-without-secure-boot http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/57536-... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista#Vista_capable_lawsuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista#Vist...