• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Why does Vista/7 take so much Space?

Hacp

Hacp

Lifer
This always bugged me for a long time. A Windows XP SP3 is around 3.5gb of space. In comparison, Vista and Windows 7 take 11-16gb of space. What is using up all that space? I heard you could shrink Vista down to 1.7gb. Does anyone know why Microsoft decided to bloat vista/7 up?
 
More features, better security ...

DOS was small, why is windows XP so bloated?

Disk space is cheap, why does it matter?

There is no real comparison between Windows XP and Windows 7 IMO.
 
Based on a generous 20gb size, that's $1.60 in hd space. I think I can swing that cost for my new machine :^D
 
pcgeek11 said:
More features, better security ...

DOS was small, why is windows XP so bloated?

Disk space is cheap, why does it matter?

There is no real comparison between Windows XP and Windows 7 IMO.
Click to expand...


the only reason it ever bothers me is for moving VMs around :-/
/is creating 6 server 2k8s @ home to move to school
//hates lugging around a portable hard drive
 
Because it can. We're most likley installing it to a 160gb-2TB hard drive. Even on a SMALL drive (160gb laptop) the extra space is a few percent of the total drive.
 
Last edited:
pcgeek11 said:
More features, better security ...

DOS was small, why is windows XP so bloated?

Disk space is cheap, why does it matter?

There is no real comparison between Windows XP and Windows 7 IMO.
Click to expand...

Does better security really require that much space? Also, specifically, what features are you talking about that require so much space? It just boggles my mind. I have both OS installed on my laptop and functionally, they perform the same.
 
Hacp said:
This always bugged me for a long time. A Windows XP SP3 is around 3.5gb of space. In comparison, Vista and Windows 7 take 11-16gb of space. What is using up all that space? I heard you could shrink Vista down to 1.7gb. Does anyone know why Microsoft decided to bloat vista/7 up?
Click to expand...

Remove hiber.sys saves you like 3gb's.
Remove Pagefile saves allot of space too. Turn off System Restore and remove unwanted components, now your down to 7.5 gb's ()🙂
unfortunatly,you'd have to be a nutjob to care when 1 terabyte drives can be had for just under $100, less than the cost of the OS.:\
Go back to Dos and be happy.
 
System_Mechanic said:
Remove hiber.sys saves you like 3gb's.
Remove Pagefile saves allot of space too. Turn off System Restore and remove unwanted components, now your down to 7.5 gb's ()🙂
unfortunatly,you'd have to be a nutjob to care when 1 terabyte drives can be had for just under $100, less than the cost of the OS.:\
Go back to Dos and be happy.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I searched on the internet and it seems like there is a program that can get the install down to 1.27gb.
 
Programmers are getting more and more lazy and adding more and more bloat to their code and software. Windows 7 does exactly the same thing XP did, but with more eye candy. I see no reason why it needs to be so huge. In fact, XP does exactly the same Windows 2000 did, but with more eye candy (which thankfully can be disabled) so don't get why even XP has to be the size it is.

With disk space being cheaper it's less of an issue though but what IS an issue is the rediculous amount of ram and cpu power new OSes always take compared to previous ones. Ram is still a very limited resource. You can't just keep adding more ram. Most motherboards only have like 4 slots. You might get lucky to get one with 6. If the OS is eating up 80% of your ram then there's not much left for other apps.

I see no reason to upgrade from XP. 7 is a big improvement from Vista resource wise, but still, there is not much reason to upgrade to it. Maybe in years from now when most software is designed for 7.
 
RedSquirrel said:
Programmers are getting more and more lazy and adding more and more bloat to their code and software. Windows 7 does exactly the same thing XP did, but with more eye candy. I see no reason why it needs to be so huge. In fact, XP does exactly the same Windows 2000 did, but with more eye candy (which thankfully can be disabled) so don't get why even XP has to be the size it is.

With disk space being cheaper it's less of an issue though but what IS an issue is the rediculous amount of ram and cpu power new OSes always take compared to previous ones. Ram is still a very limited resource. You can't just keep adding more ram. Most motherboards only have like 4 slots. You might get lucky to get one with 6. If the OS is eating up 80% of your ram then there's not much left for other apps.

I see no reason to upgrade from XP. 7 is a big improvement from Vista resource wise, but still, there is not much reason to upgrade to it. Maybe in years from now when most software is designed for 7.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The only thing I miss about windows 7 when I'm using XP is the integrated search. There is software to help you search for xp but it isn't as simple as press the windows button and start typing.

Another Gripe I have is that they managed to add 7gb to the install but didn't put in any really useful features. Wheres the automatic spell checker? What about a graphing calculator? Improved MS Paint? Screen/voice recording software? More full featured games? They always emphasize features but all they have are useless features like GUI improvements; nothing that improves the user experience.

Also, the amount of drivers windows 7 has is pretty stupid. You only really need WLAN and LAN drivers to connect to the internet. Then you can download everything else.
 
Programmers are getting more and more lazy and adding more and more bloat to their code and software. Windows 7 does exactly the same thing XP did, but with more eye candy. I see no reason why it needs to be so huge. In fact, XP does exactly the same Windows 2000 did, but with more eye candy (which thankfully can be disabled) so don't get why even XP has to be the size it is.
Click to expand...

If you really believe that then you're not paying attention. I'm not saying MS couldn't do more to reduce the size of their systems, but saying Win7 does exactly the same thing as Win2K did is just plain ignorant.

I see no reason to upgrade from XP.
Click to expand...

Once again, ignorance. I installed Win7 on my work laptop back when it went RTM and I'll never look at XP the same again. It's just plain painful.

Also, the amount of drivers windows 7 has is pretty stupid. You only really need WLAN and LAN drivers to connect to the internet. Then you can download everything else.
Click to expand...

Right, because everyone in the world has broadband and wants to download drivers at 640x480x256...
 
I don't have a problem with windows having lot of drivers.... but there's no reason to install them all! I don't know whether or not they actually do this though, I don't think they do.

And what is something that windows 7 has, that xp does not have? (serious question). I'm talking a major feature here, something that would normally take lot of space. Stuff like integrated search should not really take much space, it's maybe what, a couple thousand lines of code extra? Compiled it's even less.
 
Windows Vista/7 include a hell of a lot of redundancy to avoid .dll hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_hell

If you look in the Windows folders you will see files that are repeated many many times over.

I've also heard there's something close to 1gb of printer drives included in Windows.

Vista, and subsequently 7 were both written with hard drives in mind. The bare minimum hard drives that you find (namely in netbooks) are 160gb in size. An extra gb taken up in drivers is nothing, not even 1% of the drive's capacity.
 
Last edited:
EarthwormJim said:
Windows Vista/7 include a hell of a lot of redundancy to avoid .dll hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_hell

If you look in the Windows folders you will see files that are repeated many many times over.

I've also heard there's something close to 1gb of printer drives included in Windows.

Vista, and subsequently 7 were both written with hard drives in mind. The bare minimum hard drives that you find (namely in netbooks) are 160gb in size. An extra gb taken up in drivers is nothing, not even 1% of the drive's capacity.
Click to expand...

An extra gb taken is an extra gb scanned with antivirus.
 
I don't have a problem with windows having lot of drivers.... but there's no reason to install them all! I don't know whether or not they actually do this though, I don't think they do.
Click to expand...

The funny thing is that Windows doesn't do this but Linux does since 99% of the drivers available are in the stock kernel and thus included in every installation. It's one of the reasons that Linux is so easy to move to new hardware.

And what is something that windows 7 has, that xp does not have? (serious question). I'm talking a major feature here, something that would normally take lot of space. Stuff like integrated search should not really take much space, it's maybe what, a couple thousand lines of code extra? Compiled it's even less.
Click to expand...

Except that the integrated search is a major feature and while it shouldn't take much space on it's own, the database it creates will.

And if you use something like Treeview you'll see that the majority of space used by Windows is taken up by the Windows Install stuff and WinSxS.

The computer company should already provide you with a driver disk. You download drivers only really for updating them.
Click to expand...

Which contradicts your earlier statement of "Then you can download everything else.".

An extra gb taken is an extra gb scanned with antivirus.
Click to expand...

On demand scans are largely pointless anyway, just use the on-access scanner and you'll only end up scanning what you use.
 
Nothinman said:
Which contradicts your earlier statement of "Then you can download everything else.".
Click to expand...

You download to get updated drivers. The drivers provided on the CD should be better than the windows 7 drivers. The updated drivers should be better than the drivers provided. Nothing is contradicted. If anything, you contradicted yourself.
 
Nothinman said:
Except that the integrated search is a major feature and while it shouldn't take much space on it's own, the database it creates will.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? It shouldn't take THAT much space considering you can download programs that do the same thing that take very little space.
 
Hacp said:
You download to get updated drivers. The drivers provided on the CD should be better than the windows 7 drivers. The updated drivers should be better than the drivers provided. Nothing is contradicted. If anything, you contradicted yourself.
Click to expand...

You said that all you need is WAN and LAN drivers to connect to the Internet and download the rest. Originally you said nothing of driver disks which implies that you'd need to get on the Internet to download everything else. And newer doesn't automatically mean better. In fact, IME with closed source software, the opposite is usually true. I never update drivers in Windows unless I'm trying to fix a specific problem because they usually just end up causing more problems.

Are you serious? It shouldn't take THAT much space considering you can download programs that do the same thing that take very little space.
Click to expand...

If you want full content searches, then yes you need a decent amount of space. If you just want filename searches then sure, that won't take up much space. The mlocate database on my Linux machine is only 12M and that includes ~173,000 files. Where as my C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data directory is just under 2G because it includes data from Outlook, MS Office files, text files, etc.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top