Windows RT Will Require 12GB of Storage on Tablets

[super d spamalot]

[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]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....[/citation]

This will never happen, so their is no reason to worry about it. Microsoft has set VERY strict hardware standards on the OEMs for all Windows 8 devices so they do not have a repeat of the Vista fiasco. The very minimum you will find on any Windows tablet is 32GB, likely for that very reason.

But you knew that, right? I mean, surely you research a product before slagging it off online. Of course you do. Only an idiot wouldn't.

 

[epobirs]

[citation][nom]super d spamalot[/nom]This will never happen, so their is no reason to worry about it. Microsoft has set VERY strict hardware standards on the OEMs for all Windows 8 devices so they do not have a repeat of the Vista fiasco. The very minimum you will find on any Windows tablet is 32GB, likely for that very reason.But you knew that, right? I mean, surely you research a product before slagging it off online. Of course you do. Only an idiot wouldn't.[/citation]

Well, he announced what kind of person he was when he used Demerjian's idiotic WART terminology.

Kid, RT doesn't have to mean anything. It's is the name of the product. If you want to be in a conversation with the grown-ups you'll remember that.

 

[bystander]

[citation][nom]Razor512[/nom]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=gLsNxKjp9L8When 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.[/citation]
One of the things I was taught in computer science classes was that RAM is cheap. What that means, is that if you focus on making your code as small as possible, it costs a ton more in development costs.

With RAM as cheap as it is today, and storage as large as it is, would you rather developers focus their time on making their programs as small as possible, or make the software more functional and easy to use?

 

[alextheblue]

[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]Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time. Even 200+ GB SSDs are becoming affordable. You're babbling about IOPS and RAM, but nowhere does the article state that WinRT (or Win8 for that matter) has issues there. Just that the install, plus Office, plus apps, adds up to ~12GB. That has nothing to do with the speed, functionality, or efficiency of the OS. I still use WinXP at work. It is really showing its age at this point, and this is on a desktop where power efficiency is not all that important. If they put it on a tablet it would be way behind the competition in just about every way other than install footprint.

Win8 is even faster and more efficient than Win7 and WinXP alike. It also has better power management. This will carry over to WinRT. Using more memory and having a larger footprint isn't necessarily a problem, if it results in better performance, battery life, etc. It's got lots of storage space and 2GB of memory. Why go backwards? I say let the OS make some use of the resources we have available, since it has resulted in better performance.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]belardo[/nom]More memory requirements = more bugs, less performance.... MS has NEVER been about quality.[/citation]Some days I can't tell if Belardo is a troll or if he actually believes this unsubstantiated drivel.

 

[alidan]

[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]

can surface rt handle 1080p video output?
can surface play mp3s?
can surface be used to read web pages?
does surface give you more space than comparable ipads?

if it sells well, the good apps will be ported.
but you are right, it will have less apps at launch, but it will handle all the essential things.

and with the screen... i have used an ipad 2, and have played with a 3, i can barely tell the difference at comfortable viewing distance,

 

[razor512]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]can surface rt handle 1080p video output? can surface play mp3s?can surface be used to read web pages? does surface give you more space than comparable ipads? if it sells well, the good apps will be ported. but you are right, it will have less apps at launch, but it will handle all the essential things. and with the screen... i have used an ipad 2, and have played with a 3, i can barely tell the difference at comfortable viewing distance,[/citation]


At a distance the main difference between the ipad 2 and 3 displays are the quality of gradients, the higher pixel count.

The windows tablet thing will not have many applications for it and unless it becomes very popular and what you stated is one of the problems both the windows tablets and the ipad can do all of what was listed so for most people the windows tablet is less desirable as it cost just as much and because of that people will see the windows tablet as paying more for less. If microsoft wants to really develop the platform, they need to lower their prices, eg do a fire sale and sell each tablet for $150 to get it into many hands (The volume discounts companies like microsoft get on hardware for tablets brings the build cost very low (estimated never take into account the discounts a company will get as that is not public information and it is often negotiated but we pretty much know that it will be lower what ever estimates we can come up with)

They need to sell the tablet very cheaply for a length of time to make the platform a worthwhile investment for developers.

 

[Guest]

"XP would perform worse.." (hypothetically, if one was to install it on a modern tablet).

Am I the only one who has taken current hardware and installed a previous version of Windows on it?

The performance is incredible. When you see it, it makes you wonder why they can't simply maintain that standard and build upon it.

Instead, we are still falling for the same old Microsoft propoganda: The new way is automatically better, even if it runs slower and costs twice as much in hardware.

Sometimes it does turn out to be worth it (Windows 7), other times no way (Vista, and soon, RT/8).

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]Razor512[/nom]At a distance the main difference between the ipad 2 and 3 displays are the quality of gradients, the higher pixel count. The windows tablet thing will not have many applications for it and unless it becomes very popular and what you stated is one of the problems both the windows tablets and the ipad can do all of what was listed so for most people the windows tablet is less desirable as it cost just as much and because of that people will see the windows tablet as paying more for less. If microsoft wants to really develop the platform, they need to lower their prices, eg do a fire sale and sell each tablet for $150 to get it into many hands (The volume discounts companies like microsoft get on hardware for tablets brings the build cost very low (estimated never take into account the discounts a company will get as that is not public information and it is often negotiated but we pretty much know that it will be lower what ever estimates we can come up with)They need to sell the tablet very cheaply for a length of time to make the platform a worthwhile investment for developers.[/citation]

yea... video eats up space like nothing else, the expandable size is a BIG help.
take out all apps that are just for dicking around with, as in no real importance, just something interesting, and how much do you really have left in the app department?

i really thing that the sd for media expantion will be a far bigger draw here than anything else, and with windows being an old name, people who are older will gravitate tward it more than android.

 

[Guest]

I find this so laughable because people claim it's a full OS. So is OS X, or Ubuntu. OS X is about 6gb nowadays. Ubuntu is 4-5. So Microsoft couldn't cut their bloaty OS down to something actually manageable for mobile. Their competition could put their whole desktop OS on a tablet and it still would be smaller than RT. They should be embarrassed to even release this product.

 

[epobirs]

[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.

That is simply incorrect. Every version of Windows since Windows 2000 has installed all of the drivers and optional system files. Before then, it was very common for users to copy over the CABs directory on Win9x or the i386 directory on NT based versions, just to avoid having to keep the installer CD on hand. In the case of Office 2000, because it didn't completely install itself to the system, even if the custom install option was used, minor changes could be utterly maddening as it required the disc to be inserted and only the exact same version would satisfy it.

One big difference between the Surface and most other tablets is that it has a full USB port on the unit. This means a direct connection to a wide array of devices is possible that is simply not easily done on iOS and Android devices. Being able to easily port drivers over from x86 Windows and allow Surface to access devices otherwise unusable to typical tablets is a selling point for Microsoft and they need every one they can get.