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| Windows RT+Office RT takes up 12GB disk space |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-10-19 20:07:59 |
| Interesting little tidbit from the Reddit AMA session with Microsoft's Surface team. One Redditor wondered just how much disk space Windows RT takes up - in other words, if you buy the 32GB Surface RT tablet, how much space is left for your stuff? It turns out that while Windows 8 RT is considerably smaller than its Windows 7 x86 predecessor, it's still huge by mobile standards. |
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| Not quite true |
| By Nelson on 2012-10-19 20:17:32 |
| The "12GB" number is AFTER installing the full version of Office and numerous apps, to quote the source. |
 - Score: 3 |
| RE: Not quite true |
| By WereCatf on 2012-10-19 20:22:10 |
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> The "12GB" number is AFTER installing the full version of Office and numerous apps, to quote the source. That still way more than it should be. I wonder what it actually is there that's taking so horribly much storage space. Even worse when the OS takes a third of all storage on the whole system. Curious. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Not quite true |
| By Thom_Holwerda on 2012-10-19 20:27:42 |
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> The "12GB" number is AFTER installing the full version of Office and numerous apps, to quote the source. Uh, my article states that quite clearly. EDIT: ah, you mean the title. Fixing! Edited 2012-10-19 20:32 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| Windows is notorious for this |
| By siki_miki on 2012-10-19 20:35:54 |
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It is also known to grows in size over time. This can be because of installation files being left over even if the application is uninstalled. To make it worse, there is no easy way to know which installation files can be removed (already uninstalled apps for example) and which are needed(e.g. to uninstall app or add a component - which is a bad way to deal with it anyway) WinRT uses the new application store, so maybe it no longer suffers from this, but it was certainly not the only reason why Windows takes up way too much space. It looks like vast disk space on modern machines spoiled OS developers too much, especially as dumping information to disk is sometimes an easy workaround over a more complex problem. Btw. are there going to be 16GB WinRT tablets? I hope not. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Good reasons or bad excuses? |
| By jared_wilkes on 2012-10-19 20:44:28 |
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"There's some good reasons why it's larger, though." Well, no, they aren't good reasons. (And you state so yourself in the case of the former.) These are excuses. (In the case of the former "reason," we are too slow, confused, and/or lazy to actually have developed software targeted for this platform yet so we did a hack job -- will you please develop a native app for our platform, we'll pay you?) As to the later excuse, I find it rather disingenuous at best. Are you claiming there are 11GBs of drivers? No, of course not. While Windows 7 has done a better job of including a core set of generic drivers, how often do each of us find that many, many device drivers still need to be installed? So, really, one only needs to ask how much space do included drivers take up on Windows 7 now? (My guess: less than 1GB; certainly far, far, far less than 10GB.) And then one could continue to ask how likely is it the majority of these drivers are going to be needed? (Don't need to include additional modem, ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, hard or optical drivers beyond what either Microsoft or an OEM is installing, etc... You will essentially only need drivers for anything that may interface via usb or wireless -- printers, input devices, etc.) So are we talking about unnecessary bloat -- even when additional drivers are very likely to be a very small percentage of this 12GB? Edited 2012-10-19 20:49 UTC |
| - Score: 5 |
| It could have been better |
| By sukru on 2012-10-19 20:54:22 |
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Of course 12GB is too much, but it's actually better than other choice: not having a Windows ARM version at all. I've checked my current Windows 7 installation with TreeSize (great utlity btw). I have 64 bit windows, Office 2010 + 2013 Beta + Visual Studio, and a bunch of other things. This is the breakdown: 28GB Windows - 8.5G Installer files - 8GB WinSxS (backwards compatibility) - 3.6GB System32 - 2GB Assembly (.net native images for v2 and v4 for both 32 and 64 bits) - 1.2GB temp - 1.2GB SysWOW64 (32 bits compatibility) - 1GB Software Distribution - 1GB Microsoft.Net - 500MB Fonts - and the rest totals less than 1GB 10GB System Volume Information (shadow copies and system restore) 1.3GB MSOCache (Office setup files) I've skipped over program files, and user data Out of these system files, at least 32GB of ~40GB is redundant and useless stuff (for example I don't need 4 different versions of .Net). Even if we included Office in this mix (it usually takes ~2GB installation space), we'd still have a total of 10-11GB actual useful non-redundant resources. That means Microsoft has not actually done much to reduce this clutter, except for porting the code to ARM (which is important by itself). |
| - Score: 6 |
| RE: Good reasons or bad excuses? |
| By minifig404 on 2012-10-19 22:22:27 |
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EDIT: Replied to the wrong post, or other weirdness. Edited 2012-10-19 22:24 UTC |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: Good reasons or bad excuses? |
| By minifig404 on 2012-10-19 22:32:18 |
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Uh, in comparison to Linux, Windows is terrible about generic drivers. Remember, every single USB optical mouse or keyboard with any sort of reprogramability has its own driver. A lot of these from the same manufacturer use the same software, sure, but that is still a lot of drivers. Windows 7 might have better handling of USB drives and wireless network cards, but quite a few categories of devices will cause Win 7 to automatically install the manufacturer's needlessly proprietary driver. Oh, and let us not forget all those programs that install kernel drivers. Now, most of those drivers are not included on the default install, but I wouldn't be surprised if some windows machines had 5-10GB of drivers. |
| - Score: 1 |
| Good Points |
| By galvanash on 2012-10-19 22:58:34 |
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So its 12GB... That essentially wipes out the 2x the storage arguments when compared to an iPad. I'll note that in the future. I also agree that the desktop mode, which only matters to allow Office and Explorer to run for the most part, is an unfortunate blight on what would otherwise seem to be a pretty good pure tablet experience. I understand why they did it (sort of), but I still question it over the long haul. If they would have allowed native ARM apps for desktop mode it would have been totally different, but as it is now they have (to me) artificially made desktop mode uncompelling for Surface RT. I still have hope they will pull an Apple and release an ARM SDK for writing full desktop apps in the future. They made desktop mode stupid through policy - it's not stupid in and of itself though... Which brings me to the fact that this is all specific to Surface RT... I think the arguments for Surface Pro are completely different. Desktop mode will not be a hindrance, it will be an extremely compelling feature. The way I see it, Surface Pro won't be a tablet - it will be a notebook with a detachable zero-footprint keyboard that can function as a tablet OR a notebook without having to make major compromises for either. Same form factor as a tablet, same usability (for Metro Apps), but the most compelling feature is that you can (at will) use it as if it were a notebook for content creation work, with a full desktop UI and a keyboard and mouse. Surface Pro wont be an iPad competitor - it will be a Macbook Air competitor (priced accordingly)... But the value of it is if you buy one you essentially get a tablet thrown in for free. I don't think that Surface RT is a dud by any means, I just think it is less interesting than the Pro version (which is why I'm waiting for the Pro to come out before buying one). If there are enough good Metro apps RT could certainly hold its own, but its long term future is completely tied to how good the apps are. Surface Pro is less dependent on Metro apps to be compelling. Which is why I never understood why they did RT first... They should have did the Pro version first and let their app store build up to the point that RT would become compelling because of the available apps. I think they did the launch backwards, but hey - what do I know? |
| - Score: 6 |
| Comment by marcp |
| By marcp on 2012-10-19 22:59:48 |
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They seem to be redefining the golden standard for the "embedded" systems. From now one everyone will have to use boatload of disk space. Not using it? fill it with garbage! you need to fill into the MS standards. Yeah, they are pretty hilarious. They surely have no clue what "embedded" means. I'm actually constantly amazed on how they even manage to sell their crappy toys and toy OSs. This is beyond me. |
| - Score: -1 |
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