16gb ram user experience

[tortillasoup]

And how many of those reasons have anything to do with efficiency?
One can have many reasons to dislike the new Windows, but it's still the most efficient Windows to date.


What resource consumption? Let me guess... RAM caching, one of the most important best practices in efficient computing.

I cannot fathom how this misconception keeps getting drilled into people's heads... "But it's only ram caching!" Caching WHAT? The entire HDD contents? Try again. It's not caching that is the issue because if it was, the system would run comfortably with 1GB of ram and not be constantly paging the HDD when ever one opens a program. In a caching situation, more ram makes things just a bit quicker but otherwise, it's irrelevant. A program that uses more system memory isn't necessarily faster than another program that uses less system memory, it just means it's less efficiently programmed.

Sounds to me you're very comfortable using "efficient" slow hardware and slow software, while many other users enjoy "inefficient" new components and new software that end up drawing circles around old configurations, often for a fraction of the energy cost. It's called blissful ignorance until you start preaching it on forums, after that it's just plain old denial.

No, this is more like along the lines of a car manufacturer not making vehicles more fuel efficient. They've got the same displacement motor, a higher efficiency drive train, hybrid electric, CVT transmission, improved aerodynamics, low rolling resistance tires, etc. So, one would think the vehicle should be faster and get better, right? Wrong! Instead, the 0-60 acceleration times are unchanged, the fuel economy is unchanged... But how can that be! Well, because the manufacturer has decided to switch from aluminum body parts to heavy steel, ladder frame instead of unibody, steel wheels, and basically increased the weight of the vehicle by over 1000lbs!

So our vehicles are obese and so are our operating systems. Of course this isn't a direct comparison but it's an example of another industry that just struggles with efficiency.





I'd be happy with Windows 10 if it ram comfortably on a system with 256MB of ram. Caching is fine, but we're not talking about "caching" if the operating system cannot function without using the HDD as an extension of the system memory.

 

[magomago]

everyone claiming 16GB is the minimum required today for games or power users is crazy.
I've had 16GB for over 5 years now and the only times I crack 8 GB is when I try to play games, have Lightroom open, Have Hugin stitch 40 14MP images together, and have many tabs open in Chrome. It'll actually peak around 12-13GBs....and almost all of it is from Hugin.

Other than that, I don't go over 8 GB at all.

That said, if I was building another PC today, I'll definitely go with 16GB as a minimum, and maybe 32GB as long as it wasn't cost prohibitive, but its because of my photo editing needs.

A PC with the CPU pegged at 100% is still usable, a PC with RAM also pegged at 100% is just dog slow.

 

[slag]

That's why the old saying is as true as ever:

"There is no such thing as too much RAM". When I upgrade, I always try to put the highest capacity stick available in a mobo. I am already thinking about 16gb ddr4 sticks when the price is right. Two sticks in dual-channel should kick @ss nicely on 1151 builds

"640 k ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Bill_Gates

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Crazy? Nah; just depends on the games.

Like I've posted before. Playing SWTOR with a web browser open on 8GB of RAM? Windows 7 was fine. Upgraded to Win10? Out of memory errors. Is it probably Windows 10's fault? Yes. Does that make 16GB of ram less of a "new minimum"? No.

 

[Ketchup]

"640 k ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Bill_Gates

I always thought the myth was funny. Also interesting since I didn't hear that it was a myth until long after hearing it for the first time. Crazy.

 

[coercitiv]

No, this is more like along the lines of a car manufacturer not making vehicles more fuel efficient.

Except right now you're invoking a false analogy: modern cars are getting both more advanced and more efficient, and so are computers and their operating systems.

I cannot fathom how this misconception keeps getting drilled into people's heads... "But it's only ram caching!" Caching WHAT? The entire HDD contents?

YES! An efficient OS uses as much available system resources as possible as long as this provides both performance and energy usage benefits.

I have two computers in front of me, both running Windows 10. One runs a minimal installation (minimal set of drivers, 2 programs) while the other is my main computer (more drivers since it's a laptop, a lot of programs). Both units have 16GB of RAM. Which one do you reckon has more free RAM available right now?

Minimal system RAM info:
in use 3.4GB, used for cache 12.2GB, available 12.5GB

Main system
in use 2.3GB, used for cache 1.9GB, available 12.9GB

But how can this be? How can the more encumbered system (more programs open, more background processes running) have more available resources than the minimal install? Could it be because the OS is dynamically allocating resources depending on resource usage? Could it be that OS caches resources to memory only as long as programs have no need for more RAM? What sorcery is this!?

Why do you think modern smartphones use that much RAM? Their eMMC storage is faster than traditional HDDs, their OS memory footprint is minuscule compared with a traditional GUI based desktop OS, their programs are incredibly light by comparison, yet even the iPhone has moved to 2GB of RAM, while Android phones migrate towards 3GB. They don't use all that RAM to run a calculator app, they use it to to keep as much program data in memory as possible. They do that because it's the efficient way to do it.

Caching is fine, but we're not talking about "caching" if the operating system cannot function without using the HDD as an extension of the system memory.

Maybe you should read up on this subject a bit, or at least refrain from using it as an argument for the time being.

 

[tortillasoup]

Except right now you're invoking a false analogy: modern cars are getting both more advanced and more efficient, and so are computers and their operating systems.

Depending on your criteria for "more efficient", I'd say they've purposefully struggled to make their vehicles more efficient by adding weight. A Tacoma today weighs more than a freakin T100 of 1998! It is a well documented phenomenon of vehicles becoming quite porky.

YES! An efficient OS uses as much available system resources as possible as long as this provides both performance and energy usage benefits.

Windows 7 doesn't consume as much memory as it does because it's "efficient", that's ridiculous. A common issue with this argument is that you're conflating "cached" memory which is suppose to be easily discarded when out of memory and actual memory consumption from the program. You cannot run Windows 7 on 1GB of ram comfortably at all. As an operating system, if you can't run comfortably on 1GB of ram, with no other programs running, it is a wasteful OS.

I have two computers in front of me, both running Windows 10. One runs a minimal installation (minimal set of drivers, 2 programs) while the other is my main computer (more drivers since it's a laptop, a lot of programs). Both units have 16GB of RAM. Which one do you reckon has more free RAM available right now?

Minimal system RAM info:
in use 3.4GB, used for cache 12.2GB, available 12.5GB

Main system
in use 2.3GB, used for cache 1.9GB, available 12.9GB

But how can this be? How can the more encumbered system (more programs open, more background processes running) have more available resources than the minimal install? Could it be because the OS is dynamically allocating resources depending on resource usage? Could it be that OS caches resources to memory only as long as programs have no need for more RAM? What sorcery is this!?

Again, this is not my concern. Cache is suppose to be easily discarded so extra memory consumption isn't a concern since if and when an actual program needs the memory, it will be available. But we're not talking about cache, we're talking about actual memory consumption. You cannot run Windows 7 on 1GB of ram but you can run XP very comfortably on 1GB of ram.


"But windows 7 is faster"... Is it? Yes in some circumstances it is indeed faster, but it is faster not because of that extra memory consumption, but because of a handful of CPU pointers that were added into the Kernel that aren't in the XP kernel. Big whoop! If you were to disable the caching behavior of Windows 7 and Windows XP, you'd clearly understand what I was talking about when I said Windows 7 was bloated and inefficient. Windows 7 uses at least 6 times as much memory as Windows XP (IF YOU EXCLUDING THE CACHING BEHAVIOR).

"But the caching is what makes Windows 7 fast". Windows 7 isn't fast by any means, it's just barely acceptable unless you have an SSD which is back to the analogy of cars and increasing engine efficiency being lost to increase in curb weight.

 

[mikeymikec]

everyone claiming 16GB is the minimum required today for games or power users is crazy.

I wouldn't go that far. I think a major factor in why there's such a variation of opinions is because there's a variation of usage styles that dramatically alters the memory usage figures people are seeing.

I generally close all apps before starting a 3D game; I don't want little notifications that such-and-such update is available, or that gaming performance is affected by other app. Also, if I experience some issue while gaming, I already know that it's not caused by another app running.

Other people however leave umpteen tabs open, that video they were streaming, etc. Doubtless there are other apps running as well.

So I can perfectly understand why some people say "16GB minimum", though admittedly I don't understand why they work in the way they do, it seems ultimately pointless to me to leave apps open that I'm not working on at present.

I'd be happy with Windows 10 if it ram comfortably on a system with 256MB of ram.

Windows XP can't do this any more, let alone Win10. A clean XP install with 256MB RAM struggles during a Windows Update check. An XP install with Microsoft Update enabled (updates for MSO and VC+ are a good thing) would be well-and-truly brought to its knees even with 1GB RAM.

tortillasoup, if you can find me an OS suitable for average modern desktop uses that has the featureset that we've come to expect from an modern OS and yet an average user could use it comfortably with only 256MB RAM, then maybe you'll start sounding less ridiculous.

I personally think your opinion has been biased by the likely possibility that you've been running XP on hardware that far exceeds its requirements for quite some time.

 

[tortillasoup]

Windows XP can't do this any more, let alone Win10. A clean XP install with 256MB RAM struggles during a Windows Update check. An XP install with Microsoft Update enabled (updates for MSO and VC+ are a good thing) would be well-and-truly brought to its knees even with 1GB RAM.

It can and it does. I know, because I recently installed a slipstreamed version of Windows XP with SP3 and all the updates and its memory consumption after all the drivers were installed was around 100MB. If you uninstall the video drivers which is the biggest piece, memory consumption is around 60MB. That's exactly the same memory consumption as Windows XP SP0 which actually surprised me as well. For whatever reason, a slipstreamed install uses less memory AND HDD space than when you install the updates sequentially.

tortillasoup, if you can find me an OS suitable for average modern desktop uses that has the featureset that we've come to expect from an modern OS and yet an average user could use it comfortably with only 256MB RAM, then maybe you'll start sounding less ridiculous.

Just because the option isn't available, doesn't mean it shouldn't be.

I personally think your opinion has been biased by the likely possibility that you've been running XP on hardware that far exceeds its requirements for quite some time.

Maybe. I mean yes I'm currently using Windows 7 but when ever I used my XP machine, I am constantly reminded of how deficient Windows 7 is in terms of efficiency and performance. Windows' 7 advantage is taking advantage of some CPU pointers, being 64bit, and software/hardware being compatible with it. Everything else just sucks. All the advantages Windows 7 had could easily have been rolled into Windows Server 2003/ XP X64.

 

[CiPHER]

everyone claiming 16GB is the minimum required today for games or power users is crazy.
I've had 16GB for over 5 years now and the only times I crack 8 GB is when I try to play games, have Lightroom open, Have Hugin stitch 40 14MP images together, and have many tabs open in Chrome. It'll actually peak around 12-13GBs....and almost all of it is from Hugin.

Other than that, I don't go over 8 GB at all.

I think this interpretation is wrong, for the following reason:

Having a lot of memory is not because your applications might be needing that much memory.... it is because of file cache.

I would assert that your applications should be using 10 - 25% of your memory tops. The other 75%+ should be utilised as file cache instead. This greatly accelerates games and other applications, particularly starting them or loading things that have been loaded before. If you have low RAM, your file cache will be overwritten and moved out of RAM because the memory space is required for other things. This means lower performance because those caches will no longer be available, and next time they are requested have to be read from your storage device instead.

You can open Task Manager (control-alt-del) to see your file cache. Open the Performance tab and look for:

In use - used by applications - should be max 25% of your total RAM.
Cached - file cache - should be 75%+ of your total RAM.
Free - unused and wasted memory, should be next to zero except right after reboot when there has not been enough I/O to populate the file cache.
Available - this roughly is the combined sum of Cached + Free memory.

16GiB RAM was standard for me many years ago, 32GiB was standard a few years ago. Today with DDR4 I would go for 64GiB instead. If you have a very fast SSD or are not doing much on your PC other than browsing, your memory needs will be much lower though.

 

[mikeymikec]

It can and it does. I know, because I recently installed a slipstreamed version of Windows XP with SP3 and all the updates and its memory consumption after all the drivers were installed was around 100MB.

100MB is about the bare minimum memory usage that one can get a WinXP installation using. A Windows Update check will use quite a bit more; after that there won't be much memory left for anything, like AV for example.

If you uninstall the video drivers which is the biggest piece, memory consumption is around 60MB.

And if you run it in safe mode command prompt only, you can get the memory usage down even further! I fail to see what your point has to do with anything, unless you're going to start arguing that video drivers are optional (let alone AV or a modern web browser).

Just because the option isn't available, doesn't mean it shouldn't be.

I'd like a car that literally grew out of the earth and drives 300 miles through the fuel derived from a single ladybird's fart, but criticising modern cars as deficient because of what I would like to be available is hardly a substantial argument. If you think what you're asking for is feasible, then make it yourself and prove your point.

Maybe. I mean yes I'm currently using Windows 7 but when ever I used my XP machine, I am constantly reminded of how deficient Windows 7 is in terms of efficiency and performance. Windows' 7 advantage is taking advantage of some CPU pointers, being 64bit, and software/hardware being compatible with it. Everything else just sucks. All the advantages Windows 7 had could easily have been rolled into Windows Server 2003/ XP X64.

This is all wonderfully vague, but here's my $0.02: When I ran a PC build with an Athlon XP processor, it ran WinXP for years. When Win7 RC1 came out, I tried it on that same hardware. Windows cold-booted in about the same time. Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird cold-started three seconds quicker, OpenOffice started about ten seconds quicker. This must be because Windows 7 is so terribly inefficient.

 

[coercitiv]

This is all wonderfully vague, but here's my $0.02: When I ran a PC build with an Athlon XP processor, it ran WinXP for years. When Win7 RC1 came out, I tried it on that same hardware. Windows cold-booted in about the same time. Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird cold-started three seconds quicker, OpenOffice started about ten seconds quicker. This must be because Windows 7 is so terribly inefficient.

It's not just starting apps or cold boot speed, every major version of Windows brought about significant improvements in GUI rendering performance.

I have quite a few things I strongly dislike about the way MS developed Windows over time (XP->10), things that may even lead me to abandon the platform for personal usage in the next 2 years, but the one thing I have consistently seen moving from one Win version to another was performance and reliability improvements on the same hardware.

 

[tortillasoup]

100MB is about the bare minimum memory usage that one can get a WinXP installation using. A Windows Update check will use quite a bit more; after that there won't be much memory left for anything, like AV for example.

If you disable Windows update service which isn't necessary on some XP machines any more, 60MB of commit charge is pretty doable if you have the right video hardware/driver. Windows update service uses quite a bit of memory for whatever reason. Want pics? I think on a Virtual machine, due to the video driver included, the memory consumption in a fully slipstreamed, completely clean windows XP installation with Windows update disabled, the memory consumption is like 60MB. I guess disabling Windows update is cheating along with having a crappy video driver but WU is optional and blaming a video driver for memory consumption isn't fair to the Windows OS.

And if you run it in safe mode command prompt only, you can get the memory usage down even further! I fail to see what your point has to do with anything, unless you're going to start arguing that video drivers are optional (let alone AV or a modern web browser).

AV is definitely optional and the video drivers, the point was to argue that the memory usage wasn't the operating system's fault but the video driver's fault.

I'd like a car that literally grew out of the earth and drives 300 miles through the fuel derived from a single ladybird's fart, but criticising modern cars as deficient because of what I would like to be available is hardly a substantial argument. If you think what you're asking for is feasible, then make it yourself and prove your point.

What I'm asking for is something that existed in the past and now no longer exists for reasons other than what is possible. I think my criticism is perfectly valid especially if it's based upon something that WAS offered in the past and is no longer. The reasons it is no longer offered have nothing to do with plausibility.

This is all wonderfully vague, but here's my $0.02: When I ran a PC build with an Athlon XP processor, it ran WinXP for years. When Win7 RC1 came out, I tried it on that same hardware. Windows cold-booted in about the same time. Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird cold-started three seconds quicker, OpenOffice started about ten seconds quicker. This must be because Windows 7 is so terribly inefficient.

I don't know what build you had but as much as I'm sure you appreciated all the caching Windows 7 did for you, I don't particularly care all that much. Windows Vista was derided for being too aggressive with wasteful caching, wasting the HDD's time which slowed other tasks that were being performed at the same time, effectively making the system slower on the whole, especially during/after boot which is why Windows 7 pared back some of that caching behavior. Caching may be a good idea for a system that is on a lot or switches between standby and full operation but it totally sucks if you're working off a cold boot and the system takes forever to fully boot because Windows thought it would be a great idea to start reading 10GB of random data off the HDD right after the boot sequence had finished, making the computer unusable for a good 10 minutes.

But the argument wasn't really about caching, even if that behavior can slow a cold boot system down tremendously. Instead, I'm talking about pure resource utilization, ignoring caching behavior. An operating system that needlessly uses memory is one that steals available memory away from applications that could use it. When I cold boot this Windows 7 laptop, I have about 900MB of memory being used. I'm not entirely sure how much of that I should blame on the OS but I've never seen memory consumption less than 600MB, even if safe mode. If I had an additional 800MB of memory on this 4GB of ram system, I'd greatly appreciate it. (But why don't you buy more!?) Because reasons and the point still stands, I want that 800MB of memory back regardless if I have 4GB of memory or 16GB of memory.

 

[mikeymikec]

If you disable Windows update service which isn't necessary on some XP machines any more,

Ah, so now we're comparing Windows XP to newer versions of Windows but the former lacking a key component...

AV is definitely optional and the video drivers,

And AV and video drivers... yes, I think you've entirely departed from any kind of sensible real-world, average user scenario.

What I'm asking for is something that existed in the past and now no longer exists for reasons other than what is possible. I think my criticism is perfectly valid especially if it's based upon something that WAS offered in the past and is no longer. The reasons it is no longer offered have nothing to do with plausibility.

If you want to argue that something is plausible, then your argument ought to at least some basis in the real world. It doesn't. You may as well start arguing that Windows XP ought to have Windows 95's memory usage because it's technically possible to use Windows 95 on the Internet. Why need 256MB when you can make do with 16MB? Your metric is completely arbitrary.

I don't know what build you had but as much as I'm sure you appreciated all the caching Windows 7 did for you, I don't particularly care all that much.

You care about performance, except when you don't.

making the computer unusable for a good 10 minutes.

If you're finding that a modern version of Windows takes ten minutes to boot, you're doing something wrong.

When I cold boot this Windows 7 laptop, I have about 900MB of memory being used. I'm not entirely sure how much of that I should blame on the OS but I've never seen memory consumption less than 600MB, even if safe mode. If I had an additional 800MB of memory on this 4GB of ram system, I'd greatly appreciate it. (But why don't you buy more!?) Because reasons and the point still stands, I want that 800MB of memory back regardless if I have 4GB of memory or 16GB of memory.

As you've already agreed that there isn't a viable alternative, what good is your concern on this point? Do you think that if you complain on forums long enough that MS is going to listen and make Windows use say 500MB less RAM?

Modern versions of Windows have improved on resource efficiency for the last ten years. The vast majority of computers I've seen are easily capable of running Windows at a decent enough speed, certainly on par with any XP system relative to XP's era, and in a fair few cases with better performance. In no era of Windows could I have taken a six-year-old machine and with a couple of cheap upgrades make it run the latest version of Windows well. In Windows XP's era that would have involved taking something between like a 386 or 486, which no amount of upgrades to that platform could have achieved the same feat. Yes, that's mostly due to hardware catching up with our needs, but if Windows was as bloated as you seem to believe it is, we would have performance on new Win10 machines akin to the kind of performance I saw on WinXP on its release, which wasn't that great. 128-256MB RAM was common in those days and I was spending a lot of time upgrading it to 512MB, then around about 2009 to 1GB. I started seeing diminishing returns on platform upgrades running XP maybe about three years after its release. Today I can build Windows machines that run Windows anywhere between "pretty well" to "absolutely flies" without spending relatively large amounts of money.

Maybe eventually Windows will require an SSD to avoid sucky performance, but my bet is when that day comes, using a HDD in an average user's machine will be as valid a concern as trying to connect to the Internet today with 28kbps dial-up!

 

[Cerb]

2012-ish: started getting lagginess, and occasional warnings, with 8GB (maxed out).

Late 2014: started getting lagginess, and occasional warnings, with 16GB.

Upgraded to 32GB when what I considered a suitable deal on suitable memory happened. I'm good, for now, and will likely upgrade my CPU when I want or need 64GB+, rather than when my current CPU is too slow.

8GB is a bare minimum, IMO. Office alone can easily eat up 6+GB RAM, with normal users. More depends on what you do. Once you're down to 25% or so cached, though (assuming >95% not free), expect the PC to gradually start dragging, as it gets closer to 100% physical used, even with an SSD, as it swaps in and out read-only data.

Even for my personal purposes, I haven't bought a mechanical drive in 5 years now. Been buying SSDs (Intel and Toshiba) ever since, not a single one has failed me yet.

Sandisk U110 (bad batch?), and MyDigitalSSD Super Cache (got /home off, before it kernel panicked and was useless), personally. Of others', the same Sandisks (unusable), a Hynix OEM (data recoverable), and some Samsung, that I forget the model of, now. Still, rarer than HDD failures, though they were 80%+ or so catastrophic failures (time between symptoms and death too quick to get any data from them), while HDDs seem to be about 50% or so catastrophic.

One reason I don't like SSDs and this is a bit ridiculous but bare with me... it gives developers an excuse to make bloated programs, much like improved CPUs and more available RAM. I don't know about you, but I don't think a basic calculator "app" should take up 100MB of ram. Windows 7 takes a long time to boot up on a conventional HDD yet feature wise, I just don't see it justify its resource consumption over Windows XP. I only use Windows 7 because XP hasn't been given the support that it deserves.

Counterpoints:

1. RAM soldered onto to motherboards, and single-RAM-slot notebooks and SFFs, deny that potential bloat room to thrive. The RAM used needs to be doing something useful, because it's still limited, even if it's 2GB+, rather than 256MB+.

2. The calculator takes 8MB.

 

[2is]

If you're finding that a modern version of Windows takes ten minutes to boot, you're doing something wrong.

He's probably on a 5400rpm HDD and 256MB of ram, since you know... That used to be fine way back when.

 

[jimbob200521]

2012-ish: started getting lagginess, and occasional warnings, with 8GB (maxed out).

Late 2014: started getting lagginess, and occasional warnings, with 16GB.

Upgraded to 32GB when what I considered a suitable deal on suitable memory happened. I'm good, for now, and will likely upgrade my CPU when I want or need 64GB+, rather than when my current CPU is too slow.

8GB is a bare minimum, IMO. Office alone can easily eat up 6+GB RAM, with normal users. More depends on what you do. Once you're down to 25% or so cached, though (assuming >95% not free), expect the PC to gradually start dragging, as it gets closer to 100% physical used, even with an SSD, as it swaps in and out read-only data.

Please tell this to my corporate office, all of our PC's (aside from our receptionist) have 2gb of memory and they struggle to have Chrome (with only 2 or 3 tabs) open at the same time as Outlook, not to mention Excel or Word or Powerpoint or anything else. Debating purchasing some DDR3 and upgrading my work PC myself.

 

[mikeymikec]

Please tell this to my corporate office, all of our PC's (aside from our receptionist) have 2gb of memory and they struggle to have Chrome (with only 2 or 3 tabs) open at the same time as Outlook, not to mention Excel or Word or Powerpoint or anything else. Debating purchasing some DDR3 and upgrading my work PC myself.

Chrome and Outlook? Ouch.

IMO Outlook on its own is enough of a resource hog to justify oodles of RAM.

 

[jimbob200521]

Chrome and Outlook? Ouch.

IMO Outlook on its own is enough of a resource hog to justify oodles of RAM.

Yeah, some days are worse than others. Occasionally on lunch I'll watch a Youtube video or something along that line and man if I forget I'm at work at load up a handful of tabs, I have literally had to wait 10+ minutes for the browser to close and the computer to "clean itself up" enough to use. If it weren't for the locked down, static IP, corporate managed network here, I'd bring one of my own PC's in to use daily. Heck, I've got an old Mac Mini at home with a 2.0ghz C2D and 2gb of RAM and a laptop with a 2.4ghz C2D and 4gb of RAM that blow these work PC's out of the water but then again I don't have them loaded down with remote management software, Jungledisk, antivirus, and whatever else they require on these machines. Ok, done complaining about first world problems for now.

 

[tortillasoup]

Ah, so now we're comparing Windows XP to newer versions of Windows but the former lacking a key component...

If you disable the update service in Windows 7 and later, I doubt the memory savings will account for all that extra memory consumption the later operating systems have. I could be wrong and test it but it is very doubtful.

And AV and video drivers... yes, I think you've entirely departed from any kind of sensible real-world, average user scenario.

you don't need an anti-virus. I've found them to be overrated and act more like an active virus infection than anything else. The resource consumption and penalty associated with it, coupled with the fact that they don't readily prevent infections has made me basically not use them. An anti-virus program that does offline scanning occasionally is useful. But those full time scanners that run in the background are just a massive headache. 500mb of memory consumption? Constant HDD paging? For get it!!!

Oh and btw, can't tell you how many times I've gotten or I've seen a machine infected with an anti-virus program installed with the latest updates. I haven't used a full time anti-virus software in years. Sure I'd like something that I could run on a schedule but I don't know of anything that doesn't try to take over your entire system much like a virus.

If you want to argue that something is plausible, then your argument ought to at least some basis in the real world. It doesn't. You may as well start arguing that Windows XP ought to have Windows 95's memory usage because it's technically possible to use Windows 95 on the Internet. Why need 256MB when you can make do with 16MB? Your metric is completely arbitrary.

Good point, however there is a pretty large gulf in difference between Windows 95 and Windows 2000. The memory consumption of Windows XP is not appreciably more, or anything than Windows 2000 if you have all the software updates applied to both operating systems. The memory consumption of Windows 2000 over Windows 98/Me is comparable as is the performance. Windows 95/98/ME is DOS based.

Meanwhile, Vista/7/8/10 are far more related to Windows XP/2000. The memory consumption soared with Windows Vista, and supposedly has steadily declined since then. So obvious Microsoft thankfully agrees their OS was a bloated piece of crap and that it needed massive improvements.

You care about performance, except when you don't.

The reason I don't care is that when I do a cold boot a system, I don't want to have to wait 10 minutes while it "caches" 10GB+ of data. It has already read like what, 10GB of data to just load the operating system? Now it has to load an additional 10GB of garbage? I just don't care about that few second boost for an application. This was precisely why Windows 7 pared down the caching behavior.

If you're finding that a modern version of Windows takes ten minutes to boot, you're doing something wrong.

When I say 10 minutes to boot, I mean that Windows no longer is paging the HDD to cache data into memory or load other Windows services.

As you've already agreed that there isn't a viable alternative, what good is your concern on this point? Do you think that if you complain on forums long enough that MS is going to listen and make Windows use say 500MB less RAM?

Well apparently Microsoft does see complaints. It doesn't help when people like you keep telling them to keep making bloated operating systems.

Modern versions of Windows have improved on resource efficiency for the last ten years. The vast majority of computers I've seen are easily capable of running Windows at a decent enough speed, certainly on par with any XP system relative to XP's era, and in a fair few cases with better performance. In no era of Windows could I have taken a six-year-old machine and with a couple of cheap upgrades make it run the latest version of Windows well. In Windows XP's era that would have involved taking something between like a 386 or 486, which no amount of upgrades to that platform could have achieved the same feat. Yes, that's mostly due to hardware catching up with our needs, but if Windows was as bloated as you seem to believe it is, we would have performance on new Win10 machines akin to the kind of performance I saw on WinXP on its release, which wasn't that great. 128-256MB RAM was common in those days and I was spending a lot of time upgrading it to 512MB, then around about 2009 to 1GB. I started seeing diminishing returns on platform upgrades running XP maybe about three years after its release. Today I can build Windows machines that run Windows anywhere between "pretty well" to "absolutely flies" without spending relatively large amounts of money.

Maybe eventually Windows will require an SSD to avoid sucky performance, but my bet is when that day comes, using a HDD in an average user's machine will be as valid a concern as trying to connect to the Internet today with 28kbps dial-up!

Yes I agree, if you buy a system today, things are better than when you bought a machine with Windows XP way back in 2001. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, there were a lot of machines sold that had barely sufficient memory unless you upgraded them. Requiring an SSD however I think is a poor idea because it would make platforms that operate on very slow memory devices not viable.

 

[XavierMace]

If you disable the update service in Windows 7 and later, I doubt the memory savings will account for all that extra memory consumption the later operating systems have. I could be wrong and test it but it is very doubtful.


you don't need an anti-virus. I've found them to be overrated and act more like an active virus infection than anything else. The resource consumption and penalty associated with it, coupled with the fact that they don't readily prevent infections has made me basically not use them. An anti-virus program that does offline scanning occasionally is useful. But those full time scanners that run in the background are just a massive headache. 500mb of memory consumption? Constant HDD paging? For get it!!!

Oh and btw, can't tell you how many times I've gotten or I've seen a machine infected with an anti-virus program installed with the latest updates. I haven't used a full time anti-virus software in years. Sure I'd like something that I could run on a schedule but I don't know of anything that doesn't try to take over your entire system much like a virus.



Good point, however there is a pretty large gulf in difference between Windows 95 and Windows 2000. The memory consumption of Windows XP is not appreciably more, or anything than Windows 2000 if you have all the software updates applied to both operating systems. The memory consumption of Windows 2000 over Windows 98/Me is comparable as is the performance. Windows 95/98/ME is DOS based.

Meanwhile, Vista/7/8/10 are far more related to Windows XP/2000. The memory consumption soared with Windows Vista, and supposedly has steadily declined since then. So obvious Microsoft thankfully agrees their OS was a bloated piece of crap and that it needed massive improvements.



The reason I don't care is that when I do a cold boot a system, I don't want to have to wait 10 minutes while it "caches" 10GB+ of data. It has already read like what, 10GB of data to just load the operating system? Now it has to load an additional 10GB of garbage? I just don't care about that few second boost for an application. This was precisely why Windows 7 pared down the caching behavior.


When I say 10 minutes to boot, I mean that Windows no longer is paging the HDD to cache data into memory or load other Windows services.


Well apparently Microsoft does see complaints. It doesn't help when people like you keep telling them to keep making bloated operating systems.

Yes I agree, if you buy a system today, things are better than when you bought a machine with Windows XP way back in 2001. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, there were a lot of machines sold that had barely sufficient memory unless you upgraded them. Requiring an SSD however I think is a poor idea because it would make platforms that operate on very slow memory devices not viable.

Can I have some of whatever you're smoking?

 

[blankslate]

Can I have some of whatever you're smoking?

That stuff will kill you...

or cause you to post rambling things scarcely related to the topic at hand...


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