Should All the "Extras" Be Removed from Windows?

One of the biggest complaints about Vista, when it was released, was slow performance. Many attributed this to "bloatware," the fact that the OS includes many features and built in applications. If you're old enough to remember way back to Windows 3.x, you might recall that there were few extras included: you got a text editor (Notepad), a very simple word processor (Write), a simple graphics program (PaintBrush), a calculator and a few games (Reversi, Solitaire). That's about it. Windows for Workgroups 3.1/3.11 added SMB file sharing and the game of Hearts. You even needed to use a third party Winsock program if you wanted to connect to the Internet and a third party browser if you wanted to access the web.

Subsequent versions of Windows have become more "robust," with more and more extras included with the operating system. Windows 95 originally shipped without Internet Explorer, and TCP/IP wasn't installed by default. Service Release 1 (released to OEMs) was the first to include IE. Built in networking support made setting up an Internet connection much easier. A more sophisticated word processor (WordPad) was included. The Microsoft entertainment pack added more games such as Freecell, Blackjack, Tai Pai, Tetris and more, and Windows 98 added the Outlook Express email client and 98 SE included Windows Media Player. OSR2 added NetMeeting for real time communications.

Windows XP truly tried to be a "feature complete," OS, offering an instant messaging client (Windows Messenger), a built in fax and photo viewer, CD burning software, DVD maker video editing software, a firewall, a disk defragmenter and other applications and utilities that had previously required installing third party programs.

Many saw Windows Vista as the peak of this "all things to all people" trend. Microsoft added calendaring and contacts programs, an anti-spyware program (Windows Defender), a faxing and scanning program, Meeting Space (a replacement for NetMeeting), a more sophisticated screen capture utility (the Snipping Tool), Windows Movie Maker (a replacement for DVD Maker), Windows Photo Gallery, and new games (Chess Titans, Purble Place, Mahjong Titans and Inkball. The Home Premium and Ultimate editions also include Windows Media Center, for organizing and playing music, viewing photos and videos and (with a tuner card installed) watching, recording and playing back TV programs.

Naturally, the inclusion of so many functionalities that previously required buying or downloading third party programs pleased many Windows users and displeased third party software vendors who found it more difficult to sell their own products when the same feature was built into Windows. In addition, some users complained that there were too many features included that they didn't want or need, making the OS bigger (in terms of disk space and system resource requirements) and slowing it down. Indeed, Microsoft recommended at least 15 GB of free disk space to install Vista. Compare this to the 55 MB of disk space required to install Windows 95. Even Windows XP Pro only required an average of 1.5 GB of space - one tenth that recommended for Vista.

Presumably in response to the complaints, Microsoft has removed a number of the built in programs from Windows 7, at least as of the public beta (the beta is generally considered to be feature complete, but it's not impossible for features to be added before the final release). Missing are the email client, the calendaring and contacts programs, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and the messenger client. You can download these apps (selecting only the ones you want) from the Windows Live web site, along with other useful programs such as the Live Writer blogging tool.

Interestingly, even though Windows 7 has omitted these applications, Microsoft's recommended disk space requirement for the Win 7 beta has actually increased slightly, to 16 GB. These requirements are listed on the beta download web site at
Download the Windows 7 Beta

It's important to understand that in both Vista and now Windows 7, a significant amount of disk space is consumed by critical system recovery and security features. For example, System Restore can use up to 15% of the physical drive to create restore points. Additionally, the Hibernation feature creates a file that's roughly equal in size to the amount of RAM installed in the machine. The page file (virtual memory) can also take up quite a bit of disk space. For an excellent technical discussion of how virtual memory works and how large the page file should be, see Mark Russinovich's blog post at
Mark's Blog : Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory

Does disk space even matter anymore? Yes and no. If you're using a traditional platter-based disk drive, the cost per gigabyte is incredibly low. I remember paying more than $300 for a 1 GB drive back in the 1990s. Today you can buy a 1 TB drive - 1024 gigabytes - for less than $100. That's less than a dime per gig. You can have a very reasonably priced system with 2 or 3 TB of internal storage (not to mention the ease of adding USB or IEEE 1394 drives). When you have thousands of gigs of space, it's hard to get excited about Windows needing a mere 16 GB.

However, recently solid state drives (SSDs) have started to become popular. They're smaller, faster and less fragile than traditional disks since they have no moving parts. They also operate without making any noise, unlike traditional disks, some of which can be quite noisy. SSDs are now being included in laptop/netbook computers. The problem is that solid state storage is quite a bit more expensive than traditional disk space. In comparison to that $99 price tag for a 1 TB traditional drive, an 80 GB SATA solid state model comes in at around $400 to $500.

Thus, most of the SSDs that come with computers today are in the 32 GB to 64 GB range. When you have only 32 GB of storage space, devoting almost half of it to the operating system becomes more of an issue.

The 16 GB disk space requirements for the Windows 7 beta pertain to the Ultimate edition (the only edition in which the beta is available). This week Microsoft announced that the OS will come in six different editions (see the details in the News, Hints, Tips and Tricks section below). It's likely that the Starter edition, which is expected to be designed for low powered netbooks, may have lower all-round system requirements. Since it will not include the Aero interface, Mobility Center, Media Center and many of the other features in the higher end editions, it's logical to assume that it may require less disk space.

Some folks believe that Windows should be pared down even more, that the OS should contain essentially no application programs at all. Thus Media Player, Media Center, fax and scanning programs and so forth would all have to be installed as add-ons or third party programs. The European Union already forced Microsoft to create an edition that doesn't include Media Player. Now they want to force the company to remove Internet Explorer from Windows, too:
EU objects to browser in Windows | Microsoft - CNET News

What do you think? How far should Microsoft go in slimming down the next OS? Do you want to have to go out and find and install programs for playing music, faxing and scanning, and browsing the web, or do you prefer that those applications come with Windows (with, of course, the option to install others you like better)? Were you glad to see Windows Mail, calendaring, contacts, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, etc. removed from Windows 7, or do you miss them and wish you didn't have to download them? Would you prefer to have more full featured software (not just the operating system) even if it takes up more disk space, or do you want your OS and applications to stay "lean and mean?" Should the EU be able to make OS vendors leave features out of their operating systems? Someone recently suggested to me that Microsoft should make a Windows 7 Core, similar to their Server Core OS, that's command line only with no graphical interface. What do you think of that? Tell us your opinions