News - Windows 8 will use less memory

[HEXUS]

Microsoft has blogged about its work on reducing its runtime memory requirements.

Read more.

[Pancake]

Is it just me, or does that seem pretty much pointless? most Laptops and desktops have over 4GB now so its not really an Issue

But then again, if they are aiming this at tablets it might be good. But still, 7 will run fine on 2GB

[shaithis]

Wow, just how much of a pig was Vista? Win7 reduced the memory footprint and then Windows 8 takes it further...

[cheesemp]

There is only one thing I want Win8 to do over Win7 - Stop the start up 'slowdown' that occurs. You know what I mean - you install windows and its fast for 6 months/a year then it just slows down for no reason. It struggles to start apps etc. You leave it a couple minutes and its fast. If they could fix that...

(Yes I know its mainly caused by additional apps but I'm sure they could help matters)

[Pancake]

There is only one thing I want Win8 to do over Win7 - Stop the start up 'slowdown' that occurs. You know what I mean - you install windows and its fast for 6 months/a year then it just slows down for no reason. It struggles to start apps etc. You leave it a couple minutes and its fast. If they could fix that...

(Yes I know its mainly caused by additional apps but I'm sure they could help matters)

Had my laptop for a year now and it still starts in 13 seconds, with a 128GB SSD. Not slow at all

[ik9000]

Wow, just how much of a pig was Vista?

About this much and more.

[shaithis]

There is only one thing I want Win8 to do over Win7 - Stop the start up 'slowdown' that occurs. You know what I mean - you install windows and its fast for 6 months/a year then it just slows down for no reason. It struggles to start apps etc. You leave it a couple minutes and its fast. If they could fix that...

(Yes I know its mainly caused by additional apps but I'm sure they could help matters)

How to you purpose they fix the issue of user added bloat?

SSDs do cover the issue up to a point but so many apps add DLLs and EXEs that start to boot-up....nothing Microsoft can really do about that without changing the entire way that Windows apps work (a la OS X).....but then you'll get people complaining about that

[ik9000]

There is only one thing I want Win8 to do over Win7 - Stop the start up 'slowdown' that occurs. You know what I mean - you install windows and its fast for 6 months/a year then it just slows down for no reason. It struggles to start apps etc. You leave it a couple minutes and its fast. If they could fix that...

(Yes I know its mainly caused by additional apps but I'm sure they could help matters)

Had my laptop for a year now and it still starts in 13 seconds, with a 128GB SSD. Not slow at all

I find it's shutdown that takes forever with win7. They really need to sort it out. Takes longer than XP to shutdown. Both my work PC and home PC do it so I can only conclude it's not a hardware thing.

[ik9000]

How to you purpose they fix the issue of user added bloat?

SSDs do cover the issue up to a point but so many apps add DLLs and EXEs that start to boot-up....nothing Microsoft can really do about that without changing the entire way that Windows apps work (a la OS X).....but then you'll get people complaining about that

Ah but Microsoft does let you decide what can start up, if you know where to look. I've tweaked mine so all the crap doesn't load at start up. Adobe manager? Itunes and bonjour? All those crappy updaters which try to auto load in the background. They're all turned off.

[Funkstar]

Is it just me, or does that seem pretty much pointless? most Laptops and desktops have over 4GB now so its not really an Issue

But then again, if they are aiming this at tablets it might be good. But still, 7 will run fine on 2GB

Priorities have changed in the industry I think. People now don't want massive PCs or laptops (yes, there will always be a market for full sizes systems. many on here for example), netbooks and tablets are where it's at, at the moment. I know many people still think tablets are a fad, but then people said the same about netbooks. I don't believe they are, they are just another market for manufacturers and developers.

For example, in the past people would have had a laptop or a desktop and that's about it. Now, like me, many people have a large desktop for heavy duty tasks and a laptop/netbook for general purpose use. I will soon have a tablet for some things as well. So there we go, before there would have been one sale per user, now we have three.

Also, what is the harm in streamlining the OS? Sure hardware specs are going up, but why not make the best use of older hardware these days as well? Or instead of the new software running a bit better on your new PC, why not run way better on that new PC because it's more powerful and more efficient? Makes for a much better user experience.

Wow, just how much of a pig was Vista? Win7 reduced the memory footprint and then Windows 8 takes it further...

Very very true! However, lets look at it another way. It also shows that the core of Vista was a really good base to build on. Instead of having to really change the core system for a new release, Microsoft's Windows team are able to spend their time streamlining and optimising it. Pretty good if you ask me.

[crossy]

Is it just me, or does that seem pretty much pointless? most Laptops and desktops have over 4GB now so its not really an Issue But then again, if they are aiming this at tablets it might be good. But still, 7 will run fine on 2GB

I don't agree at all - as far as I'm concerned MS can do all these kind of tweaks that they want to. Anything that reduces resource comsumption is worthwhile, since it means that Win8 will run well on older kit too. Plus smaller OS requirements mean more for apps and/or a more responsive system.

Personally I'd like to see more control on what gets started automatically on boot, (yes I know there's low level ways to do this), and some way that you could make more low-level hardware changes without having to remove and rebuild the OS - e.g. it'd be nice to be able to changes like different cpu, especially with all the good gear coming out of Intel and AMD.

[Funkstar]

Personally I'd like to see more control on what gets started automatically on boot, (yes I know there's low level ways to do this)

I definitely agree with this. It took me ages to find the right controls to disable a problematic installer my father in law had messed up with.

[TheAnimus]

and some way that you could make more low-level hardware changes without having to remove and rebuild the OS - e.g. it'd be nice to be able to changes like different cpu, especially with all the good gear coming out of Intel and AMD.

You can! Easyest way is to remove all the chipset drivers and just use the generic slow, missing functionality ones before you change the hardware!

SSDs do cover the issue up to a point but so many apps add DLLs and EXEs that start to boot-up....nothing Microsoft can really do about that without changing the entire way that Windows apps work (a la OS X).....but then you'll get people complaining about that

They are changing them a bit now, one of the nice things about windows was the DLLs, the COM/ActiveX stuff, it allowed for things which you still can't do properly on some operating systems 20 years after MS were doing it, the whole pasting an excel sheet say into a 3rd party, non-MS app which knows nothing about excel, which you can simple double click and edit excel in, even thou your in a 3rd party app. Bloody cool technology, but how often is it really needed?

All too often bad developers are using these techniques to solve problems which just don't require it. With the Metro development (new in Win8) apps are much more limited, as such they won't be able to impact boot time in the same way.

[dangel]

Startup has already been seen to be ~5 times faster and they've done a lot of interesting work with the shutdown (like kernel hibernation) - there's plenty there that will help systems (even those saddled with shovelware). I think people are underestimating what's possible at the OS level *without* forcing devs into Metro and *without* forcing them to abandon the technologies that 8 is still very much built on (COM, DLLs etc). Metro isn't the answer your searching for here - in fact it's job is quite a different one - and I think it's obscuring the amount of work that's really going on for the core desktop/service side. Beyond that they're adding stuff that gets my dev side all fizzy - like WinRT

P.S. the new taskmanager has a "startup" tab

[Agent]

I definitely agree with this. It took me ages to find the right controls to disable a problematic installer my father in law had messed up with.

Autoruns!

[Funkstar]

that looks like a good tool Agent