I'm reading this thread on an 11-year-old desktop with 8GB of RAM and not feeling any particular reason to upgrade, although I've priced it out a few times just to see.
Mint 22.x doesn't appear to be demanding any more of my machine than Mint 20.x. Neither is Firefox or most websites, although YouTube chat still leaks memory horrendously. (Of course, download sizes have increased.)
I've been enjoying running Mint on my terrible spec chromebook - it only has 3GB of RAM, but it rarely exceeds 2GB used with random additions and heavy firefox use. The battery life is obscenely good too, I easily break 20 hours on it as long as I'm not doing something obviously taxing.
Modern software is fine for the most part. People look at browsers using tens of gigabytes on systems with 32GB+ and complain about waste rather than being thrilled that it's doing a fantastic job caching stuff to run quickly.
Mint is probably around 0.05% of desktop/laptop users.
I think root comment is looking at the overall picture of what all customers can get for their money, and see it getting worse.
This wasn’t mentioned, but it’s a new thing for everyone to experience, since the general trend of computer hardware is it gets cheaper and more powerful over time. Maybe not exponentially any more, but at least linearly cheaper and more powerful.
The OP is not looking at the static point (of the price of that item), but the trend - ala, the derivative of the price vs quality. It was on a steep upward incline, and now it's flattening.
Try Win11 on that old PC, and you'll really feel the need for more RAM and a better CPU.
I sometimes feel M$ is deliberately making its Windows OS clunkier, so it can turn into a SaaS offering with a pricey subscription, like it has already successfully done with its MS-Office suite (Office 365 is the norm in corporates these days, though individuals have to shell out $100 per year for MS Office 365 Personal edition). We can still buy MS Office 2024 as standalone editions, but they are not cheap, because Micro$oft knows the alternatives on the market aren't good enough to be a serious threat.
Mint 22.x doesn't appear to be demanding any more of my machine than Mint 20.x. Neither is Firefox or most websites, although YouTube chat still leaks memory horrendously. (Of course, download sizes have increased.)