RAM got expensive, so Windows is going on a diet

Memory prices have gone up sharply, largely because the factories that make it have been handed over to the chips that feed AI servers. That has a consequence nobody at a PC shop expected: the 8GB laptop is back on the shelves, and Windows 11 has spent years behaving as though everyone had 16.

Pavan Davuluri, who runs Windows at Microsoft, said the quiet part out loud on the company's Inside Windows podcast. "I do think memory is top of mind for us right now in the industry, especially as we look at the rising cost of memory for computers across the board." Microsoft had already listed memory optimisation for machines with 8GB and up as a priority back in July. The work is spread across unglamorous places: a more efficient memory allocator underneath everything, rewriting bits of the Windows shell in WinUI 3 instead of web technology, and trimming the WebView2 instances that built-in apps quietly spin up. The principle Davuluri described is that an optional feature should only take memory while you are using it.

Some of it appears to have landed already. Windows Latest measured a 16GB laptop after installing 26H2 and found it sitting at 7.0GB used after a restart, where it had previously been over 10, and staying under 90 percent with Edge, Teams, Outlook and a 4K video going. That is one machine and one tester, not a benchmark suite, so treat it as encouraging rather than proven.

If your PC feels slower than it should and 26H2 has not been offered yet, the usual culprit is Windows Update itself rather than the hardware. Tendvane's Windows Update repair wizard is built for exactly that stuck state.