We had some earlier posts that touched on this topic. Finally Microsoft is solidifying their plans. I agree that they could have communicated this clearer and earlier in the process thereby avoiding all this last-minute drama.

I was just asked this question by a friend this morning. He got a notification pop up to register interest for windows 10. He asked what it's going to cost him. I couldn't answer him as I was confused over the pricing. He's a consumer, with Win 7, so, as far as I can work out, he gets a free, licenced copy of win 10.
In any case, I suggested his PC is a little old and slow and he may wish to upgrade to a new machine to resolve some of the problems he's finding.

In any case, I suggested his PC is a little old and slow and he may wish to upgrade to a new machine to resolve some of the problems he's finding.

That is a mighty understatement. As I said elsewhere here months back, Windows 10 will not work on machines with older CPU's.

I forget the precise details, but if certain modern instruction sets aren't present - then it's simply "No GO!" - that includes most older XP machines, perhaps even those now coping with Windows 7 or even 8.1.

I said at the time there is going to be a lot of hardware upgrading. As far as I know, Microsoft haven't issued a helpful upgrade advisory tool as they did with Windows 7. Silence has always been the stern reply from Microsoft Engineers on that topic.

My advice would be, if your machine is older than say 3 years max? Upgrade.

I just remembered before going to bed [Sydney time] one instruction alone missing from older machines CPU's I had intended a guinea pigs.

"No Execute" - Yes, I had to look it up at the time - a newy on me. There are many other Red Lights as well.

That is a mighty understatement.

I was being kind. :)

He needs a computer with keyboard, and word processing and MS Excel, but doesn't want to upgrade in advance. I get that, too. I suspect he'll have to wait a while until all the win 8 inventory clears the shelves before going for a new machine.

Windows 10 is supposed to have the same hardware spec requirements as windows 8 (which are): [microsoft.com...]

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2

RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)

Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver

There's also a Get Windows 10 app that will check your system's compatibility (Requires Win7 or later).

Microsoft is usually pretty good about supporting older hardware (with the noted exception of Vista). I wouldn't solely base hardware requirements based on experience with the Win10 preview.

There's also a Get Windows 10 app that will check your system's compatibility (Requires Win7 or later)

Well that's news to me, I wonder how long that has been around - no I haven't been looking for it since last year.

I wouldn't try and run Win 8.1 or, now Windows 10 on those bare specs at all.

In reality, for most people Windows XP is just fine for all their every day needs. The primary problem is that so many websites no longer support browsers which will only run on XP. The other problems are security issues.

The average person does Google searches, send and receive emails, perhaps goes on Facebook, and sometimes write letters, download photos etc, maybe basic games. Except for browser and security issues Windows XP handles all of that just fine.

Windows 8.1 is overkill for most people. Hell my Windows 8.1 has a windows XP Classic Shell. I don't do "Microsoft Apps", no touch screen, nothing fancy at all.

However, my IE 11 might have 16 tabs open, Firefox with 24 tabs, NoteTab Pro, PaintShop Pro 7, several instances of File Explorer open, Microsoft Moviemaker, and I'm probably downloading from my Personal Video Recorder via my Network, AOMEI Professional Backupper, 16 Gb RAM, six HDD including USB drives, plus, plus.

I have to have my [generally] state of the art desktop machine. For me, it is a work tool - nothing else, it pays for itself. But I work it up to the max.

Ironically, custom built, it cost me much less than what the average person pays over the counter for a modern average PC. And no I'm not into games.

Those specs are of course the bare minimum requirements. I'd have a hard time working with less than 16GB of RAM and a whole lot more HDD space. However, they do have a version of Windows 10 that will run on a Raspberry Pi, so I think they're getting better at working on low powered hardware.