Point taken. I guess I should have more accurately phrased my comment as "Windows 7 won't run worth a crap on a Pentium-II" rather than "Windows 7 won't run on a Pentium-II" (the latter implies "at all").
I have found that Microsoft is generally very cautious about their [minimum] System Requirements, which is where the 1GHz CPU "requirement" comes from.
Speaking of "it probably is quite slow", back in 1999 I ran Windows 95 on a 1988-vintage 30MHz 486 with 8MB of RAM. It took ages to do anything, and you could only load one application at a time. It was nearly f**king useless, practically, but it proved the same point.
Yep! Microsoft generally obsoletes hardware VERY slowly, and supports things as long as possible. I still have some DOS programs I wrote back in the late 80s that run in a console on Windows 10! A 30 year old program still running...
Yes, I could rewrite it - but why? It still works, still processes data. No need to recreate things.
That’s the biggest strength that Microsoft has - it supports programs and hardware well beyond what most companies and people would expect. That is the ultimate lock-in; support your customers with whatever they’re using for as long as they like.