What's in store for Windows?

We all know that Windows 7 has been a giant success - it is a great operating system all around.

However, I just can't possibly imagine what they can do to improve it for the next version of Windows. Any ideas, rumors, or speculations?

 

Since it's still a fair ways off, there's not too much out there, but allegedly, it'll be pretty radical.

 

make it more lightweight than windows XP...thats the goal

 

You can't? How about the ancient desktop graphics susbsystem, well behind the state of the art, and still bitmap based? WinFS anyone?

Hmm. Unfortunately that article is completely devoid of any kind of concerete information.

Nonsense. Nobody in his/her right mind would set that as a goal.

 

Yeah, I would like to see better tablet support. Voice recognition also.

If this was old school Microsoft, I'd like to see better integration with cloud services, etc etc.

But other companies would whine that Microsoft is monopolizing the PC again. I long for the days of monopoly Microsoft. Think about how fast Windows evolved during the 90s....

 

To make it even more modularised.
So you can select whatever package you want in your system and it won't break.
A newer filesystem is needed how long have we been using NTFS?
We need something like ZFS with rollbacks redundancy, say no to file fragmentation!
Even more power optimization cache more stuff into the RAM and make the harddisk sleep.

 

screw ZFS. Few users are affected by lack of rollback redundancy and file fragmentation.

We could use a serious facelift in the interface. Seriously, the menus and desktop paradigm has been around since the 80s. Is there seriously nothing better that will further our productivity.

 

they work on that. actually win7 has much of that in already. just not enabled for general public. they're still in protocol phase to find out who uses what when how to be able to clean up massively. win8 should be the first with the cleanups.

when win8 is out, all high-to-midend systems will be ssd based. topic is mood. rollback redundancy is optional available. could get exposed in more userfriendly ways, yes.

my ram is full with the cached data. how much more do you want to put in there?

 

I will echo the idea of making 8 lighter than XP. That's a big thing that I want to see. 7 is a resource hog just like Vista was. Sure, they improved it a little, but the fact remains that it consumes way too many resources for the job that it does. This is a major area for improvement.

 

they're working on it.

but a) they improved quite much already, not "just a little". and b) it doesn't consume "way too many resources". it could use less, sure. but actually, it's the best windows yet in terms of putting the pc's resources to good use.

 

No, it doesn't. It does what it is supposed to do, and what any modern OS is supposed to do. Feel free to install DOS on your computer if you want something more lightweight.

 

Some thoughts of what might come (speculation):

-Software (hardware as well) for notebooks to create their own miniature networks with computers in close proximity. Similar to pairing bluetooth devices, when within proximity it automatically establishes a link for easy file transfer.

-Fully integrated virus scanners. Like Windows Defender, but something like MSE fully integrated.

-Built-in sandboxing.

-Something for installing software similar to linux repositories. It makes sense they would do this as it would eliminate lots of viruses people install after visiting phishing sites rather than the real one. This would also create the benefit of Windows being capable of automatically updating third party software. Additionally, if all software in the repos followed similar installation procedures, less junk would be left behind after removal.

-Better plugin support for Windows Media Player. It's the best way to let their creative customers implement the ideas they failed to. They can always steal it later on . Give people the ability and you'll surely see more integrated support of various internet media, alarm clock functions, ringtone makers, ect.

-A desktop that's no longer just blank space waiting to be covered. Gadgets were a beginning of this. Perhaps something like Kubuntu, where gadgets are so functional they make the desktop a real workspace.

 

RAM is getting cheaper and more abundant by the day if you are not going to use it for caching what are you going to use it for?
Most people don't run heavy memory programs therefore if you don't use it you are wasting it.
The OS can use algorithm to allocation certain percentage for caching and swap to disk when not enough RAM is available.
ZFS do not suck per se.
A new filesystem is required to increase the performance.
Not to mention with TB harddisk
Linux is pushing for BTRFS it is only nature M$ keep up with either introducing the feature in NTFS or roll out a completely new filesystem.
NTFS (New Technology FileSystem) is no longer New

If M$ has done so from their early past it would be legal BUT now if they do it they will be scorned upon as MONOPOLY.The favourite word to extort money out of them.
They also do not have a repository to fill it up with.
On M$ platform it is payware not GNU like Linux.

There is nothing much to do about facelift shift the taskbar here and there? Will that make you happy?
Or unless Windows 8 look like OS X then you will be happy?

 

100% of my unused ram is used for caching by windows 7. this is already here. sure they can optimize it. but it's not like it's not existing already.

ZFS doesn't suck. but so doesn't ntfs, really. which is why they didn't have need to replace it yet. there is no new feature that would make one say "oh yeah, ntfs can't do that just fine right now". except random arbitary statements without proof.

if they replace it, please not by ZFS, as it still lacks. if they replace it, please replace the way to handle storage devices. define a new interface (replace the ATA protocoll completely), make it database based. so the disk is in responsibility to manage the files how it wants. for disks that can't, provide a virtual layer in between.

ssds have a full virtual file system by themselves, optimized for the way they work. it completely replaces ntfs actually.

a truly forward thinking next gen file system gets rid of directly addressing disk locations.

 

Main Problem with NTFS is fragmentation.
I don't care if it can defrag itself but if it defrag itself when it is on battery then it wastes my power.
If it does more seek due to file fragmentation it wastes my power as well.

 

Have you checked the resource usage of XP against 7 and then referenced it with the performance statistics? For nearly identical performance XP takes up a resource footprint that's roughly 1/4th of 7's. The gap is commonly even more pronounced. If you want to be ignorant of the bloat then that's your prerogative. Excuse me for being an optimization fanatic. It's become a lost art, unfortunately.

 

when win8 is out, the only reply you get from complaining about your hdd will be "get an ssd".

besides that, no matter WHEN it has to clean up the fragmentation (even while saving), it will 'waste power'.

interestingly, it doesn't fragment much, and thus the amount of power "saved" is about none anyways.

it has become a lost annoyance, indeed

an actual up to date windows xp with all it's functionality enabled starts slower and uses more ram and pages much more often than an up to date windows 7 installation. and yes, knowing it from actual experience.

the gap you talk about is no where as big. actually, win7 takes over winxp in most of the benches and tests, just because win7 knows how to actually put your how to good use. you build yourself a dreamworld of "the old is better, as it's what i know". instead of moving on, learning the new, and realising that it's progression.

 

It doesn't fragment much nowadays because Windows made disk defrag a task auto scheduled in task scheduler.
At times you see lot of harddisk activity when you are not reading/writing to harddisk because defrag is running.

Windows Xp doesn't have Aero Peak, doesn't do superfetch etc.
Bloat is subjective, lets be more objective, if it produces the intended results it is good.
Manual optimization is OUT, abstracted Optimization is IN.
The OS will optimize itself you just relax...

 

no the amount of fragmentation is down by the way the os works with the disk independent on defragmentation. all documented by the win7 development team, on optimizing disk writes to not fragment too much. they worked hard to measure which form of fragments are actually hurting the performance in a measurable (not yet feelable) way, and directly work against those.

ntfs and win7 work quite intelligent together to not hurt performance. the scheduled defrag is just there to clean the resting mess.

anyways, hdd for the os are a dying technology anyways. the way it works now is good enough. if you want to get rid of any defragmentation needs, get an ssd. you'll get one in some years anyways. so they should not put actual work into that. the current solution is good enough for disks. for the future, it will be obsolete anyways.

 

I agree. While XP is smaller than 7, it also does way less. While one can say DOS is friggin smaller than XP, you will realize DOS is also missing significant improvements, like power management and x64 for one.

XP is missing tons of things under the hood.

We need to move on. I hate seeing these threads. They bring as much disdain as religion and political threads.

 

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. I just got the Asus 1201N in my signature. It came with 7 Home Premium. I reformatted the thing, installed XP and 7 on separate partitions (both fresh installs), fully updated both, and then evaluated the performance and resource footprint of both OS's. XP was using about 1/4th less memory than 7 and happily let the CPU idle with no utilization. I will concede that 7 started several seconds faster than XP most likely due to its better usage of my dual-core Atom. My gaming tests and virtualization tests all gave the performance and resource advantage to XP. The benchmarks I've seen online show similar performance between XP and 7 while mentioning 7's higher footprint.

I don't know how you managed to slim down 7 and I would like to know. If I glossed over or missed something then I'll give 7 another go, but at the moment I have no concrete reason to. Feel free to educate me on exactly what I'm doing wrong when attempting to streamline 7.

I can remember what's going on in every window I open. I don't need Aero Peak. I can wait a few extra seconds for something to load and I keep things defragmented. I don't need Superfetch. You can't turn these things off as far as I know. If they can be turned off, then feel free to correct me. What I need is for my commands going to Photoshop, UnrealEd, Hammer, Blender, and other programs to take less time so I can do more things. What I need is to be able to load a ton of packages and not thrash the HDD. What I need is to be able to use the latest DirectX (yes, look, an XP limitation).

 

win7 doesn't have a higher footprint. where? memory? yeah, because it actually CACHES YOUR HDD TO MAKE YOUR SYSTEM FASTER. simple myth, busted.
gaming: win7 has dx10 and dx11, which both allow for higher performances of identical graphics than dx9 on xp. why? because the whole graphics driver architecture got remade to perform better, and be more (much more) stable. most benchmarks of show, too, that even in dx9 mode, win7 is on par or better than xp. maybe not on your system. maybe it has not yet the best drivers, maybe not the best hw.

oh, and have you installed xp on the start of the hdd, and win7 on the middle? that part of the hdd is slower.

you don't focus on what counts: actual usability. win7 starts faster, launches your apps faster, let them stay in memory better, so all in all it's more snappy, and performs better in your daily tasks.
no tweakings.

well. put it in another way: you HAVE TO remember everything. we don't have to manually do that anymore. memory in brain freed for more useful things.

HAHAHAHA AND YOU TALK ABOUT PERFORMANCE?!!?

yes you can. but it's no gain. it's a loss doing so.

which will always be on win7. it has a better task scheduler for multicore systems than xp. but if an app runs at 100% cpu on xp, and on win7, it will be identical in speed. as the app is the limit, not the os.

which win7 excells at, compared to xp, which trashes to hdd about everything once ram usage gets above 1gb.

and by doing so, you would have win7 even FASTER.

oh, and did you know that having aero on is faster than having it off? it's like gaming with with or without a gpu..

 

I asked you how to make 7 better. I did not ask for you to repeat talking points from Microsoft. I have installed both OS's on the same machine. The things that you're saying aren't matching up with my real world experiences.

 

which doesn't matter, as your system isn't "the majority of the world". in short: i blame your system.

to make win7 faster than xp, install win7 on the first partition, xp on the second..

 

As a matter of fact, I know a thing or two about the subject, yes. Feel free to provide some data to your contention of "bloat" in Windows 7, if you can.

I wonder what, exactly, you mean by "resource footprint". I hope you understand how to measure that, and separate actual resource usage by the OS (memory and CPU cycles used for OS structures and housekeeping) from auxiliary resources that the OS allocates, revokably, to improve system operation and responsiveness.

Well, there are a number of ways to skin this cat, and you do have to ask yourself what the purpose of your optimization is. An OS is not a purpose in itself, and there is absolutely no point in minimizing the footprint of the OS for minimization's sake. Hence my remark about using DOS (although that is not even a real OS, but I digress...) instead.

One relevant question to ask is whether, on any reasonably modern system, the user experience of a typical user, or even a small but non-negligible fraction of users, could be improved by further optimization along the lines you suggest. Now, let's look at the fact that the standard PC these days (not counting netbooks which really are a passing fad in my opinion) comes with at least a Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of memory (at least, these kind of specs will be standard by the time Win8 might be released). This means that the vast majority of users will not be able to max out the machine's memory even if they tried. Given that situation, I wonder why anybody would whine about reducing the "OS footprint". Those users belonging to the small fraction of a percent of the user base who actually do max out their system will have the knowledge and the means to get a 64-bit machine that does what they want, and the rest will never see a difference.

Bottom line, trying to reduce the "OS footprint" of the next version of Windows measured by the standards of a decade-old OS makes no sense whatsoever, and I repeat, nobody in his right mind would waste any time on an exercise as pointless as that. We are not using the computers from ten years ago anymore, either.

Well, then there's your problem right there, running the OS on anemic hardware like that. If it was me, I wouldn't complain if Windows 7 runs slow on my pocket calculator, either.

 

Not really. First of all, all filesystems become fragmented. Second, once we go to SSDs, which will pretty much be mainstream by the time Windows 8 hits the road, that issue will become mostly moot, and certainly once the SSD controllers become sophisticated enough. There's really not much reason for the filesystem or OS to worry about fragmentation anymore at that point. Otherwise, I don't think many people even understand what a filesystem does, and what, if anything, might be real shortcomings of NTFS. Suffice it to say that there is precious little reason to invest in improving NTFS, versus, say, building on it. Oh, and the size of hard drives is really the last reason to worry about; NTFS handles multi-terabyte drives just fine.

 

7 was on the first partition. You simply assumed it wasn't. I think I see what's wrong here now.

I'm convinced that you purchased your 2730P, it came with 7, performed well enough with light-duty apps, the presentation value wowed you, and therefore never needed to compare 7 with anything else. That's ok. There's nothing wrong with that. I realize the vast majority of people don't push the limits of what their machines are capable of and therefore don't see the performance differences. I'm telling you there's a performance difference, but your choice of hardware (which I should have paid attention to earlier) is telling me you're at the complete opposite end of the spectrum of computer users and therefore you won't even stress the system enough to find that difference. That's ok. My mistake.

Hey, no problem. I get it now. I just wish I could show you the ridiculous things I can make hardware like this do. We're a different type of computer user and I should have realized that earlier. It's not very often you find someone like me who has no problem running virtual machine s, multitasking, and doing modern graphically-intense gaming all on a netbook.

Someone once told me I make computers do the impossible.

 

you, sir, have no clue.

i installed win7 on p4 systems with 1gb ram and a 6 year old or so 80gb hdd. it performed better (and stayed at that performance, unlike xp) easily.

i run it on netbooks, where it delivers a great user experience and performance compared to xp.

i run it on high end systems, where it scales much better upwards (which is the important reason to drop xp. it doesnt' scale to todays systems).

it has tons of enhancements f.e. for ssd based systems, which are for you far away future, for me lovely past and present.

i run it environments from 2 - 4gb. from 1.2ghz to 3.33ghz. from single core to quadcore. from atom or p4 till core i5. ssds and hdds. laptops and desktops.

EVERYWHERE, win7 is more responsive, and faster at its main tasks, than xp.

besides that, it is more stable, more compatible with todays hw and sw, has much better usability features (aero snap, startmenu search, winkey functionalities.. etc).

oh, and, with all of them, networking is MUCH faster. both inhouse networking (with home server and homegroup) and external (internet). both wlan and lan.

i know on some systems it's not as fast as xp. but that's a failure of the system, the manufacturer of the hw/drivers, or the one who installed it.

yet you fail to make a system run better with an 9 year of improvements enhanced operating system, than with an old, out of date, nonsupported one

none of your statements are magic, nor have they anything to do with the os btw.

vmware works just fine on a netbook, yes. what gives?

 

Not going to happen... and why would it. We are talking about a potential release date 2 years in the future. Are you concerned that hardware is going to backslide to pre 2007 levels, because that is the only rational reason why they would decrease the system requirements rather than increase them. The rumors as I understand them is that Win8 is going to be 64bit only. This means that MS believes (and rightfully so IMHO) that the following will be true in 2 years:

1) computers will come with 2 cores minimum
2) computers will have 4gb RAM minimum


Now, that doesn't sound anywhere close to what hardware levels were like when XP was released (Pentium 3 or Pentium 4 with 512mb RAM). As to why MS would design a system that would run on less than this is beyond me as systems with those specs are going to be over a decade old when Win8 is released.

Just to put it in perspective, Win3.1 was released in 1992... do you think it would be reasonable for MS in 2001 (when XP was released) to design a system that used fewer resources than Win3.1? XP is dead and it's time to let go.

 

No, seriously, I was not trying to be facetious: If the question is about a next-generation OS, it really makes very little sense to take clues from your experience on an underpowered piece of hardware that is going to be obsolete long before that next-generation OS even comes out.

Hehe, yeah, right. If you call late-1980s Doom "modern graphically-intense gaming", that is. But, hey, I'm sure running Crysis on your netbook with its integrated graphics chip gets quite, hmm, intense...

 

I don't think you realize Crysis runs on medium settings (low shadows) at 1366x768 on this 1201N netbook. Here is someone running Crysis on the same system with slightly lower graphics settings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31KtbRULFZg Under Windows 7 there is significant pausing/hitching that impacts gameplay. Under XP it is smooth.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O4PO5PmpM

stutterfree, win7. just a quick google..

 

Your wanting to play games on hardware that barely meets the minumum sysem requirements isn't really a compelling argument to force the rest of us to use a substandard OS (and yes, any OS that is designed to work with pre-xp hardware would by necessity be pretty crappy).

 

Only if you overclock! Not a very good idea on a system with very little cooling capability. The FPS is also lower.

I never made any suggestion to force people to use XP. All I said was that I'd like to see Windows 8 be more efficient on resources than XP is and that 7 is still quite bloated. I also indicated there's a performance and resource footprint difference in XP's favor between the two OS's. Some people deny that exists.

 

if overclocking the gpu fixed the stuttering, then there's just a difference in the NVIDIA PART of the system. nothing to do with the os. mainly, the driver isn't that mature. and nvidia is known for bad, buggy, underperforming drivers. just ask microsoft who is suing them for that.

understanding your hw and sw would make you not put false assumtions out into public about win7 being bloated, then.


and your statement is still wrong about "win7 is quite bloated". your example is very extreme. if you check the specs for crysis, CRYSIS is not made for that environment you run it on. not win7. win7 runs well. crysis fails. fault of crysis (and the nvidia driver).

you blame the wrong guy. definitely.

oh, and, you have a much better cpu for multithreading than that video. so it should be actually WORSE (if anything cpu related (a.k.a. anything OS related) should be the cause of the stuttering.

 

Of course a OS that is 2 generations behind will run faster on lower spec hardware than the newest one. If I had decided to run win95 instead of XP on my old P4 system it probably would have been screaming fast... but what would I have been missing? XP was more stable than 95 (like win7 compared to XP), had more current hardware support (just wait, this one is coming), more secure (win7 beats xp here too), and more useful (as to whether win7 beats xp here is totally subjective). For most users purchasing systems, there is little thought as to whether the system will play a 4 year old video game with the OS they are using. If they plan on playing games with high system requirements they will purchase a system for that...

 

This isn't an XP vs. 7 thread. Thanks.

 

Did you use the maunfacturer provided disk or Windows 7 retail disk?
Because if you used Manufacturer disk it will have lots of bloat due to OEM Ware.
You should clean install Windows 7 and activate using the SLP License
You should use Windows 7 because it uses Aero to render the GUI so less stress on the poor unpowered Atom unlike Xp which uses the Processor to render everything.

 

But NTFS easily hit >3% Fragmentation after installing back the program after a reformat. *NIX Machine using FS like UFS, EXT2/3/4 never hit this level of fragmentation.

 

Could be driver issue.
There are lots of factors affecting performance you should never discount any of them.
Sorry about being off topic however I strongely feel a need to enlighten people on the right way to install Windows 7, without the OEM Crapware.

 

I used an ISO I downloaded through Digital River. It was a fresh clean copy of 7 activated with the COA on the 1201N. The Asus-supplied disc was a factory image with crapplets on it so there's no sense for me to use it. I do intend to migrate my big laptop to 7. It's ok for there to be some bloat there since the resources aren't quite so constrained. There's always some resources left over even when stressing the machine under Vista. 4 GB of RAM and a C2D P8400 is in a completely different zip code from 1.7 GB of RAM and an Atom N330.

 

Did you run basic optimization?
C:\Windows\System32>defrag C: /u /v
C:\Windows\System32>Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
Then let it finish before entering the commands below.
C:\Windows\System32>defrag C: /u /v /b <--Boot Optimize
Windows 7 will by default run the above after using the computer for a while the commands just jump start optimization earlier.
I remember seeing on Windows HDC there was a document telling OEM to run the idletask before creating a image out of it to enhance performance.

 

question is, how much performance loss happens because of it. depending on the fragmentation pattern, there is NO loss.
and, as said, hdds are on the way out anyways. => it's a non-issue that gets an obsolente non-issue.

a system with slower cpu and faster gpu runs without stuttering, than a syste with faster cpu and slower gpu. it can't, technically, be the os fault. not possible.


so what's in store in win8 to fix your problems you have in win7? hopefully, by the times of win8, nvidia got to pay enough because of the suing of microsoft that they finally deliver great drivers for the os. but it's not microsofts job to do so.

 

I don't understand why it should be lighter. Windows is designed for the mainstream. Mainstream users could care less if they're using 600mb of ram or 1.5gb of ram. If someone is obsessed enough to let as much of their ram sit idle for whatever reason rather than have it utilized for user optimization, then they can switch to a low requirement linux distro ie) run arch with blackbox.

And my desktop has a 2 ghz athlon 64 and 2x512mb of ram. right now with about 4 ff windows open for a total of 60 something tabs, a word document, and avira scan running in the background windows 7 has managed my ram resources well enough to utilize 655/1022mb with cpu load not going over 19%. I built this machine on XP in 2004 and used it on XP until late last year. Since switching to 7 64bit, It runs smoother, boots and shutdowns faster, connects to the wlan faster, and hasn't given me a single bsod. It thrashes the hd less and manages paging better, and features under XP (like previewing thumbnails and the sort) actually work without slowing it to a crawl. Can't say the same for my super optimized n-lite'ed XP experience.

 

or just disable all the functionality and usability enhancing components of win7 and get it to run within their placebo gains

same experience i've had, then. more than once. on different (but similar) hardware. and happy to hear it works that well for you.

 

The ProcessIdleTasks is a good one. Thanks for that! However, there's one issue with all those commands. I never complained about speed. I complained about memory utilization. When I boot 7 I show it using almost 1GB of RAM. When I boot XP it uses roughly 1/4th of that. Sure, 7 is definitely much more responsive than a fresh Vista install, but it still has the bloat. That limitation gives me much less room to fit my apps under 7 than XP. There's a lot of fat that can be trimmed out or turned off.

 

What's the point to have so much free ram?

 

When did I say the RAM was free? XP has a rather light memory footprint compared to 7. I want to see 8 match XP in that regard. When there's less memory taken up by the OS then there's more to share with applications. I mainly use a ton of RAM (and CPU cycles) when doing virtualization tasks or level design. Some of the Wacom-based art I do also is rather memory intensive and hates sharing with other running tasks. Your average home user doesn't care, but I do especially when Microsoft is pushing 7 to be adopted by businesses as well as home users. When I see XP using so little RAM and accomplishing similar performance figures and tasks as 7, I have to wonder why the extra bloat is justified and why Microsoft isn't working harder on slimming things down.

 

I wouldn't worry about RAM Windows willl free up RAM if more needs to be allocated to certain programs you need to run.
This worry will be resolved by the OS. That is what an OS is supposed to do manage resources and perform task required by users.
End Users only need
1)Responsiveness
2)Low Power Consumption (Which Windows 7 achieved)
3)Stability (Quite satisfactory)

 

Definitely agree with the first two. I recently tried to set up an ad-hoc network with two XP machines... straightforward it is not. I ended up using an external hard drive to transfer data instead. And native Ogg Vorbis support in WMP was something I was really hoping for in WMP12 (though I still use WMP10); generally increasing its codec support would be good.

The desktop... I'm minimalist there. Zero icons right now. Although I know I'm not in the majority here.

Yeah, right. Windows 7 does not use less RAM than XP at startup, even forgetting about SuperCaching. Even 32-bit Windows 7 uses over 400 MB, over 100 MB more than what a fully-patched, all-bells-enabled XP will give you. And yes, I know that from actual experience. Startup time, it's close enough that it's pretty inconsequential. If the 5% difference is enough to bother you, you should be hibernating instead of rebooting, anyway. XP is stable enough to run without rebooting for weeks, even with virtualization, DirectX games, and frequent hibernation (I have a 25-day uptime right now on XP, having done all of those activities). Paging, maybe XP does more, but if you have enough RAM you can get away with no page file at all.

And newer isn't always better. Yes, it should be better for most people (if it ain't, there's a problem), but it doesn't make sense for everyone to use the latest software, car, whatever. There are the uncouth masses who hear Vista is bad and stay at least a 10-foot-pole away from it with no real knowledge of it, but there are also those of us who have learned the new, and have determined that the old is better for our purposes.

Of course it wouldn't have been reasonable to shoot for 3.1's minimum system requirements, and I don't expect Microsoft to shoot for XP's minimum requirements, either (although I'd hope they don't require 4 GB RAM or two cores, either). But XP's successor just came out three years ago. That's like saying it's time to let go of Win2K in 2004. Sure, it wasn't brand new then, but it wasn't a dinosaur, either.

You should see how fast Windows 3.11 is on a Core 2 Duo. Blazin'! It almost convinced me to abandon Vista for it (what's five mainstream realeases, really?), but unfortunately the Ethernet setup was as difficult as trying to get my Broadcom card working in Solaris. So in the end I stuck with Vista until I was able to get XP as a compromise between 3.11's amazing speed and Vista's modern functionality.

I'd actually forgotten that by the time I read your post...

The place where I really appreciate a lightweight OS is when I'm virtualizing it. A nice 300 MB-RAM-usage Linux distro allows me to do a good amount more on my host OS without noticing it than a 1GB-RAM Linux distro (indeed, a few weeks ago I left a lightweight Linux VM up for several days without even realizing it). But for a host OS, 300 MB or 600 MB isn't that important these days (it would've been in 2005).