It used to be expected of older, physically slower PCs, but these days it's true even of brand new computers.
I mean, back in the day - when I first started working as a PC technician back in 1999, I had a 486DX 100mhz with 48mb of RAM using Windows 98 2nd edition, and that was faster than most of the newer PC's I've used since. Such was my expertise back then that I rigged up a live toggle switch to the jumper settings on the board so that - while the PC was running - I could overclock it to 120mhz - play my first-person shooters - and then set it back down to 100mhz again. I even managed to play Heretic and Hexen on it smoothly, and without any trouble. I even built a cooling duct over the CPU and heat sink that ran to a fan at the front of the case to improve cooling and stability, and occasionally augmented that by placing a saucer filled with ice cubes in front of the case so that chilled air would be sucked in!
I am right now typing this note on a laptop with a 2.42ghz i5 core CPU with 8gb of RAM, a 1tb hard drive - and (unfortunately) Windows 10.
I try not to shut this PC down when I need to pack the laptop away - I use the "hibernate" function instead. Why? Because it takes forever to shut down and start up. I actually live in DREAD of having to reboot this thing, because it literally takes two minutes to prepare to shut down - and then no less than eight whole minutes from the time the screen lights up to the moment I can hit the space bar to log in. After that, Windows 10 has to get all its shit together first - it has a "where the hell did I put my menus" moment over another 2 minutes or so - before I can even risk clicking on anything, or it will take even longer.
This was not unique to my laptop either - a friend bought a new laptop around the same time as well, with the same sort of specs as mine, but from a different manufacturer. It has an i5 CPU and 8gb of RAM - but hers takes even longer to boot from a cold start than mine does.
Then there are days when the browser just decides it's going to act like I'm playing Minecraft online with heavy lag. I could type an entire paragraph in a text box before the first line starts to appear on the screen. One way to fix this, I've noticed, is to close the browser and then open it again - sometimes several times, before it will work as intended.
These are just a few examples of what I'm getting at here: it seems to me that whenever the peeps over at MS decide to work on a new version of Windows, they set out by looking at the very latest, most powerful computer available as a baseline model... and then challenge themselves to see how completely they can fill, occupy and consume its resources, CPU and RAM capacity. I call this "The Microsoft Challenge". Goodness only knows what sort of prizes are involved for the winner, but I hope it involves a funny hat and cake containing a powerful laxative.
This implies that no matter how fast or advanced your new PC will be - by the time you boot the version of Windows it came with, it's already going to be slower than the 486 you used back in 1999.
Windows 10 is like the braking parachute on a fighter jet - only deployed all the time. It's like driving your car with the park brake on. Basically, when you turn off your PC, it's performance ratings actually go up.
Let me give you another example: back in 2018 I bought a Mecer laptop that came with Windows 10 and 4gb of RAM - and a 32GB static RAM drive. It seemed alright at first, but within 6 months the thing was almost unusable. The hard drive was too full from all the daily MS updates to install any more, and I had to clear all the junk out, and install an app to turn off updates - which meant I couldn't install anything else from Microsoft's website either. Windows 10 ran on the 4gb RAM, but at a slow, gentle jog, sorta like it was carrying a backpack filled with cement. I also couldn't upgrade the RAM because 4gb was its ceiling. This is why I replaced this laptop with my current better one in 2020.
But even so, the misery doesn't end there. You see, the new one also came installed with Windows 10.
And don't think you can just wipe Windows 10 (or 11) off your hard drive and install an old copy of 98SE or XP instead - Microsoft have made sure that even if you do, you can't do much with it. You can't even access the internet with it, because they won't LET you. Even the more useful and less inane Windows 7 is now out in the cold and "no longer supported". Windows 10 too, is busy sliding off the edge of that table now, with 11 looming ominously on the horizon, like the crest of a tsunami.
This planned obsolescence forces us to keep up with the latest Microsoft products - no matter how slow or shitty or poorly designed they may be. Uncle Bill did mention once that he hires lazy programmers because they supposedly take all the shortcuts - which explains the sheer number of "patches", "service packs", "updates" and other twaddle accompanying every single MS product since day one. And of course, once they move on from the current version to a replacement, they force us to as well. It's called a captive market. People always have to keep up - and spend more money to buy "new, improved" products to do the same thing as products they already bought previously.
Oh sure, I could "just" install something else, like Linux perhaps - there are dozens of versions of the OS available nowadays, and sure, Linux has come a long way to become user-friendly and easy to use in the time since I first encountered it in Unix format, but it's still not quite there yet.
I have Raspbian installed on my Raspberry PI 3 that runs our media center at home - and even that is a little quirky and relies too much on command line... er, commands - to change under the hood settings Windows users are used to just clicking menus for. Besides, we tend to be limited to using the sort of software used in our working environments - so that's just not practical for me.
I can imagine awkward moments at work if I turned in briefs and proposals and other documents in the wrong format for various assignments that won't work on the "standard" MS Office framework, or change their spacing, formatting or layouts across platforms!
Oh yes, I do use resource managing apps like CC cleaner and Glary Utilities to give Windows 10 a couple of wakey-wakey slaps now and again - and they sometimes even make a slight impact by clearing the RAM, organizing the bits and bytes... but even so, in the middle of an important task, Microsoft's flagship product regularly decides to fuck out and lose its marbles - and an app won't load, or a window just goes black, or something weird happens, like it "forgets" a USB port - and the only thing left to do is reboot the thing before it turns into a very expensive frisbee.
And then my shoulders sag because it's a whole twelve minutes wait before I can continue my line of thought - and get whatever it was I was doing, done.
Imagine for a moment, if Microsoft just STOPPED trying to clog the plumbing of our new computers and allowed the hardware to advance for a couple of years so that we could actually enjoy having the best of both worlds instead of using brand new hardware overburdened by a bloated, over-featured OS that bogs it all down and literally SWAMPS the hard disk with daily "updates" downloaded automatically from Microsoft, to fix what they fucked up on the previous day?
I mean, our PCs would literally FLY. And I would probably get a lot more stuff done!
Cheers! 
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