Vista Memory requirements: Too much, way too much

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris
  • Start date Start date
C

Chris

At first I thought this was a joke:

I finally got my Vista beta 2 installed, and was shocked to find it
operating at idle at about 861 megs of memory!!
That is way too much memory consumption, and is flatly ridiculous. None of
my games have ever pulled that amount of memory usage. And this from an
operating system?

I work for another software company, and this is bad for our business. Why?

Vista will cost around $350 (US currency).
But there is a hidden cost:
At a minimum each customer will have to buy an additional 1 GB ram stick
just for the OS!! This will cost around $300 (US currency). Heaven help the
customer who cannot simply buy more memory, but have to buy new systems.
There is now more of a strong tendency to ditch windows and Intell PC's and
switch to other OS's and such. Now not only have our customers left MS
behind, they have left all our 3rd party application's behind too.

An operating system is responsible for memory allocation and deallocation,
and file management. But trying to outdo games with memory consumption is
strange. I am the first one to test vista on my production team, but I see
no other option at this point to tell my software bosses that Vista is very
bad for our software product, and to discourage them from doing so.

Microsoft should just start from scratch with their OS, and get something
that installs about 100 megs of files on a Harddrive, and runs at about 50
megs of memory during runtime. That would really get the worlds attention.

Chris J.
 
At a minimum each customer will have to buy an additional 1 GB ram stick
just for the OS!! This will cost around $300 (US currency).
Click to expand...

Bahahahaha... Where do you shop?!?!
 
Hmm, well, Vista is still "BETA", and the focus now is to optimize the code
for performance and fix any bugs that are found. Vista contains a lot of
debug code right now, thats part of the reason why its really so memory
intensive. I am running Vista on a machine with 512 MBs of RAM, yes, its not
as fast as XP but I don't see any loss in productivity really from it. Even
Zack Whittecker has managed to install Vista on a system with 256 MBs of RAM
(don't know the performance) but it sounds like its working ok.

Anyway, don't cast judgment yet, lets wait until the software RTM's before
we do so. Also, we are still not at RC1 yet, and that build will be a true
reflection of what the RTM will be, then we can start to decide if Windows
Vista is right for us. We currently have the opportunity to make things
right, I would implore on you to send in your feedback using the Feedback
link on your desktop. And where did you get the idea that Vista will cost
$350? The last time I heard, pricing details have not yet been determined.

When I look back at the memory requirements for each Windows release, it has
always increased with each version at a gradual rate and the same case
applies to Vista.

Windows 95: 8 MBs of RAM
Windows NT: 12 to 16 MBs of RAM
Windows 98/SE: 16 to 24 MBs of RAM (32 MBs if you plan to do multimedia)
Windows 2000: 32 to 64 MBs of RAM (64 MBs recommended)
Windows ME: 32 MBs of RAM
Windows XP: 64 to 128 MBs of RAM
Windows Vista - after a five year gap and the changes that have taken place,
Windows Vista has more stuff in it, more complexity, more technology, 512
MBs of RAM, a minimum, seems like a logical step.

Even with XP, you had to add more RAM over the years, I first started out
with 256 MBs of RAM and the more stuff I did with it, the more RAM I needed
which provided a better experience using the OS.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
 
Chris said:
At first I thought this was a joke:
Click to expand...
But there is a hidden cost:
At a minimum each customer will have to buy an additional 1 GB ram stick
just for the OS!! This will cost around $300 (US currency).
Click to expand...

What planet are you from? I can get 1 Gig of ram for between $100-120
canadian.
 
I'm running just a couple of small apps and I'm only using 320 megs of
physical RAM... I assume you mean by "running at idle" that no apps are
loaded and the OS is just "sitting there"... does your video card use shared
RAM? That might take a good sized chunk.

Yeah, the hardware requirements are steeper for Vista... but, hey,
hardware's CHEAPER these days. You can get a hummin' box for under $1K these
days... Remember when a friggin' IBM XT cost $4K? (or much more, depending
on who your "Computer Guy" was...) Hahahahaha! I had a 6MHz IBM AT back in
the day... thing was blazing fast compared to the 4MHz boxes. Isn't that
just crazy? Now we're getting close to having hardware performance 1,000
times faster than just 15 years ago (or so...). Ah, sorry for rambling...

Thanks,

Lang


--
Dell XPS Gen 2 running Vista 5384
P4 3.0GHz (HT)
1GB RAM
160GB SATA HD
ATI Radeon Pro 9800 w/ 128MB
Audigy 2 soundcard
 
Chris said:
At first I thought this was a joke:

I finally got my Vista beta 2 installed, and was shocked to find it
operating at idle at about 861 megs of memory!!
That is way too much memory consumption, and is flatly ridiculous. None of
my games have ever pulled that amount of memory usage. And this from an
operating system?

I work for another software company, and this is bad for our business.
Why?

Vista will cost around $350 (US currency).
But there is a hidden cost:
At a minimum each customer will have to buy an additional 1 GB ram stick
just for the OS!! This will cost around $300 (US currency). Heaven help
the customer who cannot simply buy more memory, but have to buy new
systems. There is now more of a strong tendency to ditch windows and
Intell PC's and switch to other OS's and such. Now not only have our
customers left MS behind, they have left all our 3rd party application's
behind too.

An operating system is responsible for memory allocation and deallocation,
and file management. But trying to outdo games with memory consumption is
strange. I am the first one to test vista on my production team, but I see
no other option at this point to tell my software bosses that Vista is
very bad for our software product, and to discourage them from doing so.

Microsoft should just start from scratch with their OS, and get something
that installs about 100 megs of files on a Harddrive, and runs at about 50
megs of memory during runtime. That would really get the worlds attention.

Chris J.
Click to expand...


Where do you buy your stuff. I never pay anywhere near what you are quoting
"off the top of your head".

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
MVP Windows Shell/User
(using Vista 5384.4)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew half as much as you think you know,
You would realize you don't know what you thought you knew.
 
Hell yeh :o) Memory at the moment stands about 300-500MB but I always keep a
few windows open including Windows Live Messenger & Desktop.

And dude... come on, I make an effort to spell everyone elses name right -
just copy and paste it in if it's too difficult.

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--
 
We've got this great shop just round the corner (about 20 miles but hey...)
and it's really really cheap!
www.web-systems.co.uk

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--
 
Vista Ultimate $688.


Andre Da Costa said:
Hmm, well, Vista is still "BETA", and the focus now is to optimize the
code for performance and fix any bugs that are found. Vista contains a lot
of debug code right now, thats part of the reason why its really so memory
intensive. I am running Vista on a machine with 512 MBs of RAM, yes, its
not as fast as XP but I don't see any loss in productivity really from it.
Even Zack Whittecker has managed to install Vista on a system with 256 MBs
of RAM (don't know the performance) but it sounds like its working ok.

Anyway, don't cast judgment yet, lets wait until the software RTM's before
we do so. Also, we are still not at RC1 yet, and that build will be a true
reflection of what the RTM will be, then we can start to decide if Windows
Vista is right for us. We currently have the opportunity to make things
right, I would implore on you to send in your feedback using the Feedback
link on your desktop. And where did you get the idea that Vista will cost
$350? The last time I heard, pricing details have not yet been determined.

When I look back at the memory requirements for each Windows release, it
has always increased with each version at a gradual rate and the same case
applies to Vista.

Windows 95: 8 MBs of RAM
Windows NT: 12 to 16 MBs of RAM
Windows 98/SE: 16 to 24 MBs of RAM (32 MBs if you plan to do multimedia)
Windows 2000: 32 to 64 MBs of RAM (64 MBs recommended)
Windows ME: 32 MBs of RAM
Windows XP: 64 to 128 MBs of RAM
Windows Vista - after a five year gap and the changes that have taken
place, Windows Vista has more stuff in it, more complexity, more
technology, 512 MBs of RAM, a minimum, seems like a logical step.

Even with XP, you had to add more RAM over the years, I first started out
with 256 MBs of RAM and the more stuff I did with it, the more RAM I
needed which provided a better experience using the OS.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta
Click to expand...
 
Well, Ok, I did pull the numbers out of the top of my head, based on
reasonable estimates.
I have seen WinXP Pro in stores in the US selling for $299, so I see it as
no stretch that Microsoft could up the price on Vista here, especially Vista
Ultimate (Which I have installed).

Now I am probably guilty as charged about misquoting the price of a gig of
RAM. I have been studiously avoiding the hardware market for upwards of year
now: so since I was wrong on Memory Prices go ahead and rake me over the
coals for that one. I for one am very glad that memory is more affordable,
and so I think that is then in Microsoft's favor. However, someone else
noted something I had failed to mention, I always buy ECC RAM for my systems
which is alittle more expensive than the regular varieties out there.

Now Andre mentioned in another thread:

Anyway, don't cast judgment yet, lets wait until the software RTM's
before
we do so.

Your right, but there is only so much a software developer can do to pair
down the fat from a Beta build to a Release build. I don't really expect
much improvement in that regards once RTM occurs. It's not like the code is
going to be substancially rewritten, I mean they are in bug fixing mode now
I would think.

Chris J.
 
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