Windows RT Will Require 12GB of Storage on Tablets

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
Title is kind of deceiving. It's obviously much more than windows that will be taking up 12gb. The amount of free memory however is MUCH more than with a $499 iPad. So it's still a big win. Hopefully at least some of the included software is actually useful.
 
[citation][nom]amdwilliam1985[/nom]Also, let's be reasonable here, stick to the fact, $500 buys you 12 to 13 GB of user accessible storage on the iPad or 20+ GB on Surface.[/citation]

Yeah, but there are other elements in the comparison:

- iPad CPU and GPU a lot faster
- 3 times more pixels on iPad screen
- iOS has a much bigger/better software ecosystem (RT doesn't run x86 Windows applications)
- iPad has 2 hours longer battery time
- Surface has microSD, USB and HDMI
- Surface has Office

Exactly how many gigabytes you have available is not very significant compared to most of these points.
 
[citation][nom]super d spamalot[/nom]It's a full OS, of course it needs all of that. Windows RT is a full blown operating system. ...[/citation]

Stop! Just stop already! Microsoft has already stated that there will be limitations...like no photo editing and no developer tools. Windows RT is a mobile OS, just like Android and iOS.
 
@killerclick

Windows 8, RT and phone 8 shares a single kernel architecture, porting apps between them should be a relative walk in the park, to further help you can happily wrap c#, c++, java and html5 into a metro (for lack of better name) app. Size of eco system may become irrelevant if MS has made it as easiest as possible to port to their platform (who would not want another revenue stream for little effort)
 
Well, considering Windows XP Pro takes up around 2GB of space, I always slipstream mine with the major service packs preinstalled on the CD. Know for a fact, after installing on an old 6.4gb formatted drive to mess around with an old computer. Vista itself took 15-20GB, 7 takes 15-20 depending on options. If they can get the Windows install itself for Win8RT below 8-10GB that would be pretty impressive actually.
 
[citation][nom]TEAMSWITCHER[/nom]Stop! Just stop already! Microsoft has already stated that there will be limitations...like no photo editing and no developer tools. Windows RT is a mobile OS, just like Android and iOS.[/citation]

Source, please.

The only limitations I've come across so far is the ability for any non-Microsoft software to use Win32 APIs (Basically, only Microsoft can make software that uses the desktop). I've seen nothing that states someone couldn't make a metro app for software development or photo editing.
 
[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Yeah, but there are other elements in the comparison:- iPad CPU and GPU a lot faster- 3 times more pixels on iPad screen- iOS has a much bigger/better software ecosystem (RT doesn't run x86 Windows applications)- iPad has 2 hours longer battery time- Surface has microSD, USB and HDMI- Surface has OfficeExactly how many gigabytes you have available is not very significant compared to most of these points.[/citation]

Here's a real case scenario, my gf wants to dump iPad for Surface, because she can't go to web pages that she normally goes to on her netbook(due to flash), she doesn't know where to find the files that she downloaded on the web page. She's basically use iPad for youtube therefore she's not touching iOS 6 with a 10 feet pole.
On other hand, with Surface, she gets to surf the web like the way she did on her old netbook with flash support. She can download stuff and able to find it, with the file structure that resembles windows. And she can type on it with the touch/type cover and use email and office.
 
[citation][nom]amdwilliam1985[/nom]Here's a real case scenario, my gf wants to dump iPad for Surface, because she can't go to web pages that she normally goes to on her netbook(due to flash), she doesn't know where to find the files that she downloaded on the web page. She's basically use iPad for youtube therefore she's not touching iOS 6 with a 10 feet pole.On other hand, with Surface, she gets to surf the web like the way she did on her old netbook with flash support. She can download stuff and able to find it, with the file structure that resembles windows. And she can type on it with the touch/type cover and use email and office.[/citation]

I'm not saying Surface is perfect or iPad is bad. But in my gf's case, she would get more usefulness out of Surface. Yes, iPad have so many apps, that's so nice. But we don't play games, not any more. I hate gaming now because those waterdowned boring mobile games. God I miss my final fantasy 7 like games, I missed god of war like games, I missed Diablo 2/3 kind of games, I missed Star Craft kind of games. You can keep your iPad if you find those apps/games satisfy you.

I'm always a believer of no one solution fitting all, good for you if Apple solution works for you. But don't stop me from playing with my Nexus 7 and my gf's upcoming Surface because we find them more useful. And yes, I tried Apple solution before, 3GS, iPad2 and 2011 13" MBA. Now I can proudly say Apple sucks, it just doesn't work for me. SGS3 is great, N7 cheaper and better, and Windows 7 FTW.
 
[citation][nom]CrArC[/nom]Because XP is crap. It's missing many behind-the-scenes enhancements and features present in Windows 8 which will wind up making it a worse performer, ancillary interface/usage issues aside. In many cases of two identical systems running Windows XP and Windows 7, for instance, the one running Windows 7 will be faster. And Windows 8 is faster still.XP is old, it's not aware of newer features or capabilities of modern processors, it is inefficient in its use of availably memory, etc etc... there's a whole bunch of reasons.[/citation]


If you compare the functionality, and for what most people do on their computers, windows XP can still do everything they want. I am mainly using XP as an example but the problem with many modern OS is not much was added to account for the 6-10 fold increase in requirements.

The main thing that has changed is since RAM and CPU are no longer as limited, programmers do not put as much effort into optimizing the OS to use as little RAM, CPU cycles, and hard drive IOPS on it's self as possible so that more is left over to run a users applications.

On todays computers, that are still using a HDD, windows XP loads OS elements faster and that is mainly due to XP not requiring as many hard drive IO's to load parts of the OS.

Here is a video I recorded a little while back (windows XP on a virtual machine running on 2X 1TB WD black 7200RPM drives in raid 0) the tweaks used is msconfig and codestuff starter to disable some of the more useless services such as indexing, messenger and various others that were commonly recommended to be disabled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLsNxKjp9L8

When XP was being developed, the biggest bottleneck in everyday computing was hard drive performance so that is why other than special images, all other elements that make up the windows XP UI take up around 5MB of storage and is loaded into memory entirely at bootup. this is why many parts of the Os respond almost instantly especially if you have decent HDD performance (would be even faster on a SSD (will be getting a samsung 830 soon :) )



All I am really asking for is for developers to somehow go back into the mindset of RAM and storage performance being extremely limited and thus heavily optimize to be efficient on IO's and memory, this will leave more free memory for users to run their applications, especially on mobile devices which commonly have 1GB of RAM and 2GB on the high end.
 
For the most part, XP can do EVERYTHING that Win7/Win8 does. Run programs and go to the web.

12GB for the OS, Office and its core APPs is crazy for a mobile device. To the guy who commented on math "more than 20GB free"... in marketing, if the tablet has 20.01GB free, then its "over 20GB".
Its like watching a car TV AD "XYZ car is under $20,000!!!" when its $19,995.99 - stupid American mentality. Does any other country do this crap?

A fresh install of XP SP2 is about 3~4GB of drive space. If you strip out the bloat not needed for a tablet and desktop support - it can be reduced to about half that. MS-Office 2003 install is about 160MB. The biggest space sucker is my 8GB Hibernation file (its already halved) on my SSD.
 
(oops, pressed the submit button)

So is some of the space a "swap file"? The Amiga OS is very small and efficient... it didn't include or need a swap file. Why is a mobile-OS sucking up so much space? Will these same issue be with WP8 devices?

If iOS is eating 1GB compared to Metro's 12GB... that is pretty sad. In comparison, Android 4.0 (before the apps and bloat from at&t, etc) is only about 512MB of memory usage.

So... if anyone makes a 16GB version of a WART tablet (Windows Arm RT - WTF does RT mean?!) - that would leave the user with 4GB to use.... yeah yeah, stick more memory in it.

More memory requirements = more bugs, less performance.... MS has NEVER been about quality.
 
I thought one of the major changes in Windows 8 was supposed to be that they were making it more modular so that, for example in tablet versions of the OS, they could easily discard portions of the OS that were unnecessary. And after all that the tablet version still requires 12GB? I've never had an ounce of desire to buy any Apple product, but at this point I'd rather buy an iPad than a Windows RT device. They're both overpriced walled gardens, but at least Apple has an established application market and requires 12x less bloat to support it.

This just makes Android tablets all the more appealing to me.

[/opinion]
 
@belardo

Oh come on do folks just have bad memories or just don't know anything, XP had a bloody crappy network stack which would degrade performance or freeze requiring a reboot to clear, Bluetooth was near impossible and wifi was a joke, probably related to to fact that IE was forcefully weld to the base kernel, It's garbage collect though an improvement over 95 and 98 still did not free up resources correctly and required periodic reboot, and sleep and hibernate was a game of roulette

Win 7 cleaned alot of this up, 8 has a brand new network and wifi stack built from scratch

just cause it can do it does not mean it does it well, I believe a horse can do the same thing as your modern automobile but lets not fool ourselves that they are equal
 
Zak's posts on here are pretty awful. Its either Positive news for the glorious Apple or some negative news here and there for the competition. I mean hell on the Surface display article he said the Director said things and when you look at Reddit that stuff was said by users.

Authority on Tech? More like nauseating click bait for advertisers.
 
[citation][nom]amdwilliam1985[/nom]Here's a real case scenario, my gf wants to dump iPad for Surface, because she can't go to web pages that she normally goes to on her netbook(due to flash), she doesn't know where to find the files that she downloaded on the web page. She's basically use iPad for youtube therefore she's not touching iOS 6 with a 10 feet pole.On other hand, with Surface, she gets to surf the web like the way she did on her old netbook with flash support. She can download stuff and able to find it, with the file structure that resembles windows. And she can type on it with the touch/type cover and use email and office.[/citation]

Yea, but I don't think Flash is going to run on Surface either....if I recall correctly.
 
LMAO, so the minimum size is gonna have to be 32GB because 1/3 of that will be Windows bloat? How is it that Windows 7 and Mac OS take 1/3-1/2 of that on a regular system?

iOS (without MS Office) will takes up to 1GB...

As an iSheep, I was hoping for proper competition to keep Apple doing well.... Anyone for Ubuntu??

ROFL

Sent from my Nexus 7 (which also has space issues go Google!)
 
A really big portion of a Windows install is drivers. Windows RT likely includes drivers for a large array of devices the average user will never connect but are important to enterprise situations.

There have been plenty of utilities in the past that reduced the storage footprint of a Windows install by selectively eliminating unwanted drivers. A new utility for Windows RT could free up a lot of space. All of these drivers remain available through Windows Update. Would you trade off having the delay of pulling a driver down from WU to get a lot more space on your tablet?
 
[citation][nom]Razor512[/nom]Why cant they just port over windows XP, Modern tablets are faster than PC's that we considered to be pretty fast when XP was in it's prime. XP uses about 400-700MB of storage space (can be stripped to around 350MB is you delete the files related so some of the more esoteric business and networking features.The core OS components (no 3rd party software), only takes about 30-40MB of RAM at bootup (which is why windows XP can boot on a system with only 64MB of RAM)Why is it that we have mobile OS such as android or iOS taking 500MB of RAM at bootup, 1-2GB of storage but only offer a fraction of the functionality of a full desktop OS like windows XP?Overall, someone needs to create a new mobile OS that is built completely from the ground up that is designed to be memory and storage efficient. or port over an OS that was designed at a time when developers actually had to worry about RAM, CPU and storage IOPS[/citation]

You know why? Cause you people keep wanting a more and more graphical oriented interface. That's why it's so big. You know how much design and coding it takes to make that pretty animation, a shitton that's how much. Could it be a bit smaller? Of course, but that would require extra time for microsoft to develop it and they're already behind on the tablet game.
 
[citation][nom]epobirs[/nom]A really big portion of a Windows install is drivers. Windows RT likely includes drivers for a large array of devices the average user will never connect but are important to enterprise situations.There have been plenty of utilities in the past that reduced the storage footprint of a Windows install by selectively eliminating unwanted drivers. A new utility for Windows RT could free up a lot of space. All of these drivers remain available through Windows Update. Would you trade off having the delay of pulling a driver down from WU to get a lot more space on your tablet?[/citation]

IMHO

I think you're talking about a default version of Windows RT install - the version that is installed on Surface should be honed down. Currently Windows 7 and Mac OS only install drivers you need and call home to install drivers for devices you want to add instead of dumping them all on your computer. The device is web enabled - should be attached to the web to work properly (for office/etc) then it should download drivers as needed not waste space.
 
[citation][nom]hate machine[/nom]The source never stated 12 gigs was the install. The guy said after the OS, Office and "A bunch of apps you will be left with 20 GBs.[/citation]

Yes but all of that comprises the standard install. Office is being bundled with Windows RT and thus far nobody has announced a product without it. This means anyone buying a 32 GB Windows RT product from any maker will see at least that much capacity already in use the first time they use the unit. Third party brands may include who knows how much additional items.

Much of what regular Windows installs by default can be removed or prevented from installing in the first place by a script, but the default is what we're going to base a 'standard' system upon.

If the x86 version of Office 2013 is any useful indicator, Office in an RT system will use at least 2.5 GB. But this is a huge chunk of valuable software and well worth the space used unless your tablet is purely for entertainment. In which case there will probably be better choices available for the money.

Personally, I'd regard the built-in 32 GB as entirely belonging to the system for the OS and installed apps. I'd look to the microSD slot, USB port, and network resources as the places for pure data items like video files. If I bought a Surface the first thing I'd do is add a Class 10 32 GB microSD card. They're quite cheap right now and 64 GB models should be coming on strong in the new year. (I haven't seen anything official indicating SDXC support in the Surface but it would be very surprising if it wasn't there.)

I might never fill up the 32 GB with software but I think starting off with the right attitude will make for a better experience in the long term.
 
[citation][nom]sundragon[/nom]IMHOI think you're talking about a default version of Windows RT install - the version that is installed on Surface should be honed down. Currently Windows 7 and Mac OS only install drivers you need and call home to install drivers for devices you want to add instead of dumping them all on your computer. The device is web enabled - should be attached to the web to work properly (for office/etc) then it should download drivers as needed not waste space.[/citation]

This is simply wrong and has been since Windows 2000.

Back in the 90s, a common thing to do when setting up a new system was to copy over the CAB files (Win9.x) or the i386 (NT) directory so that you didn't have to have the disc on hand every time a driver issue came up. Windows 2000, in recognition of how massively storage capacity was increasing and prices were dropping, installed the complete driver database onto the system and eliminated a standard hassle.

(Some people may recall how incredibly annoying Office 2000 could be, because it tried to reduce its footprint by requiring the disc for the most minor changes. It became common to copy the entire CD over to the system for this reason.)

Each version of Windows has included a significantly larger driver database locally, and a far larger database via online. (This is just the WHQL certified drivers submitted to Microsoft and only a fraction of all the drivers out there.) Windows XP shipped with about 11,000 drivers and Vista had about 22,000 at launch. Windows 7 actually had fewer drivers in some categories like printers because many models were considered too old and obscure to bother with anymore on the disc and still accessible online.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/07/25/simplifying-printing-in-windows-8.aspx

An article on the Engineering Windows 8 blog discusses efforts to reduce the driver foot print in a Windows install without giving up wide device support. a big part of this is allowing more driver code to be shared among similar items so there doesn't need to be multiple copies stored. A good example of this is the Lexmark universal driver that handles a large number of their printers. Microsoft is seeking to make it easier for more companies to adopt this approach.

It is also provider more of the essential needed to create a driver for an established category of device. For example, a NIC should only need a small amount of unique code and the bulk of the driver should apply to nearly every NIC supported.

By this approach, the number of printer supported by a base install of Windows 8 is a good chunk higher than in Windows 7 but the storage footprint for the drivers is much reduced.

But there are usage scenarios where the bulk of drivers simply aren't needed at all. Eliminating them from local storage would win back significant amounts of space.
 
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include

int main(){
disable.StartMenu();
display.AnnoyingMetro();
printf("Welcome to Windows 8");
sleep(10);
hungComputerNow();
display(BSOD);
RebootComputer();
}
 
[citation][nom]p05esto[/nom]Yea, but I don't think Flash is going to run on Surface either....if I recall correctly.[/citation]

You're partially right. Adobe Flash does not exist as a standalone piece of software in Windows RT. IE10, however, has flash support built right into it.

Flash is dying anyway. Once HTML5 becomes ubiquitous it won't be needed.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom