Perspective,
that was my point in starting this, the unreasonable requirement most people with have of buying a brand new system to use the os. something as important as an os shouldn't be written to require the latest and greatest in hardware, it should be written to work on the oldest and slowest hardware.
personally, I only use linux, which runs on i386 hardware, and only needs 64mb ram to have a gui in it.
it works better with better hardware, naturally, but it does work with that low end hardware.