Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Missing Simplicity - 3 GiB Install of Windows XP


I was surprised, saddened and a little worried when I saw the properties of the Windows folder on my computer. Over 3 GiB just to install a non-stellar operating system? Where are we heading to? Perhaps 20 GiB and 40,000 files just for the install of Windows 7?

I wish to point out that a clean install of Windows XP takes much less space than this and has much less number of files as well. It's only after one installs all the updates, patches, etc. that the Windows directory becomes excessively bulky and cluttered (In fact the System 32 folder on my computer has so many files that even scrolling through it slows down tremendously as Windows Explorer relentlessly tries to render all the file icons).

Windows keeps saving backups of all the old files whenever I update a component, something I just don't want, but something Windows just doesn't allow me to choose. Please Microsoft, I just don't want to go back to IE 6 when I install IE 7, IE 7 when I install IE 8 Beta 1 and IE 8 Beta 1 when I install IE 8 Beta 2. Please don't save IE 6 and IE 7 when I install IE 8. I just don't want them back. I want a clean, light and fast system. So please, at least give me an option to not save anything that I don't want saved.

Missing those days when I used to play the 75 KiB Dave game on a 1 MiB MS-DOS install.

Seventy. Five. Kibibytes. Phew!

No comments:

Post a Comment