> In reality, this high-end hardware isn’t really necessary for most applications outside of video encoding, machine learning, and a few other domains.

This should say "really isn't" instead of "isn't really".

In practice, most Microsoft software will still run slow even on high-end hardware. I have a high-end gaming laptop that cost 1500 dollars, and my download folder still takes 10+ seconds to load. Even at work, I regularly find myself waiting because Visual Studio hangs (and this is on a Xeon Phi with 12 gigs of RAM). Meanwhile, XFCE runs happily snappily on my $200 Thinkpad that is more than a decade old. Newer systems just seem to focus on improving throughput instead of improving latency. I am so fed up with unresponsive systems!