Windows Longhorn System Requirements

[DJGM]

Since we briefly touched upon the subject of the next version of Microsoft Windows
in the "Desktop" thread in "The Lounge", I think this deserves it's own thread here.

=============

According to this article at PCWorld.com, the minimum system requirements for the recent
developer preview release of the next major release version of Windows will be quite high.

Minimum CPU - 800Mhz Pentium III

Minimum RAM - 256MB physical RAM

Minimum VGA - 32MB Graphics card

There's no mention of how much HDD space this beast will require, but the alpha build
that I installed on my "testbed" PC recently swallowed up about 2.5GB just for the OS!

Something tells me that I'm not going to able to run the forthcoming Longhorn public
beta release (due sometime in 2004) without some really major hardware upgrades!

The spec of my main PC is . . .

CPU - 350Mhz Pentium II

RAM - 448MB of SDRAM

VGA - 8MB SiS6326 PCI

HDD - 1 x 32GB + 1 x 20GB

. . . and my "testbed" PC . . .

CPU - 450Mhz Pentium II

RAM -128MB of SDRAM *

VGA - 4MB ATi Rage Pro AGP

HDD - 1 x 10GB + 1 x 4GB

(Normally, the "testbed" PC has 128MB of physical RAM, but I transplanted one of the 128MB
sticks out of my main PC for the purposes of my recent testing of that Longhorn alpha build.)

God only knows what sort of outlandishly high system requirements the full release version
of Windows Longhorn will demand when it's finally unleashed by Microsoft in 2006 or later.
Mind you, by that time I'll have more than likely bid a fond farewell to Microsoft products,
and ditched Windows altogether, in favour of either Macintosh or Linux . . . or both!

[Pete]

I suppose by the time they finally get the things released we'll all have 20 Terrabytes of memory so it won't be as bad.

I do hope they change the skin between the current one and the final release as the one on all the leaked screenshots is ghastly. I'm not sure if I will bother to upgrade as I don't really have any problems with XP.

[Neil Jones]

According to this article at PCWorld.com, the minimum system requirements for the recent
developer preview release of the next major release version of Windows will be quite high.

Minimum CPU - 800Mhz Pentium III

Minimum RAM - 256MB physical RAM

Minimum VGA - 32MB Graphics card

There's no mention of how much HDD space this beast will require, but the alpha build that I installed on my "testbed" PC recently swallowed up about 2.5GB just for the OS!

Well, considering how you can now go and buy a new system which outstrips those three requirements (Pentium 4, 256Mb, 128Mb Graphics), then that spec looks quite low.

And of course, Microsoft always set silly low specs for their OS - didn't they claim that Win95 would work in 4Megs of RAM and a 386 processor? I remember it struggling along on a P100 and 8Megs of RAM.

[cwathen]

Minimum CPU - 800Mhz Pentium III

Minimum RAM - 256MB physical RAM

Minimum VGA - 32MB Graphics card

To be fair though, that's not such an outrageous spec considering what you can get these days. AFAIK, pretty much every off the shelf machine these days will be at least that spec, and even a 2 year old computer that was recently decent at the time will usually still be able to meet that requirement.

And you must remember that by the time the final version hits the shelves (which could easily be 2 years away) that spec will be pretty basic.

And apart from all of that, it'll probably go along fine even if you don't meet that spec - eg as long as you're not running any games, not even the most bloated Microsoft UI is going to be able to need a 32MB graphics card. And Microsoft often overquote system requirements after learning from the mistake of underquoting on Windows 95 (it said you only needed a 20Mhz 386 with 4MB of RAM - and published the same requirements for the accompanying release of Microsoft Office) - Windows XP isn't supposed to be able to run inside 64MB of RAM, but it does just fine.

[cwathen]

And of course, Microsoft always set silly low specs for their OS - didn't they claim that Win95 would work in 4Megs of RAM and a 386 processor? I remember it struggling along on a P100 and 8Megs of RAM.

Beat me to it! In truth, you really had to go to the top spec machines of the time (which would have been a Pentium 166 with 32MB RAM at the time Windows 95 was launched) in order to get Windows 95 to run quickly (although if you had 16MB the performance increase on any system was huge). Unfortunately, such a machine cost a lot of money (>£2500) and was only available in desktop form - Microsoft could not admit that.

Added to that that because Windows 3.1 ran perfectly well on a 4MB 386, the chances of people having a powerhouse such as that were slim - few people had Pentium processors at all (indeed in a 1995 electronics catalogue I had the top of the line PC was an 8MB 486 DX2-66 - Pentiums weren't popular enough for the company to stock them) . And just to add one final complication, laptops were still very much behind the times compared to desktops as far as the components in them goes - desktop replacements did not exist in 1995 when all but the most expensive models were 386's/486's with 2-4MB of RAM and a B/W VGA screen.

Microsoft had to aspire to meet the standard specifications of the day in order to make Windows 95 succesful, people wouldn't shell out for expensive hardware upgrades for a new unproven operating system (although having sampled the quantum leap forward which Windows 95 offerred, they then willingly upgraded their hardware).

Whilst they did make something which would technically run on that minimum spec (aswell as installing in only 40MB of disk space if you were careful), it was as you say not very pleasant to use (although I did once install it on a 386 with 12MB RAM and whilst it still took an age to boot it was reasonably useable once it got going) - the OS barely fitted inside 4MB RAM out the box, if you had Word going aswell it would no longer fit the memory and would constantly page to the hard disk (which was even worse than it is today with the slower access times of older hard disks).

Windows 95 did a lot to bring reasonable power into common use though - just 12 months on from the launch of Windows 95 the common computer specification, although still primative by today's standards, was lightyears away from the kit in standard use when 95 was launched. If Microsoft hadn't forced an end to PC's which went on for year and year and years without an upgrade, it's unlikely that the affordable yet amazingly powerful machines we have today would ever have happened, or that multimedia would have taken off in such a big way (it did exist before 95, but it's development was very slow - very little progress had been made between the first standard in 1990 and 1995), or that modern games would have such realistic graphics and sound.

[Chris]

Why is it that Microsoft always seem to underquote specs for their OS?

The older computers at college run Windows XP Professional and have a 500Mhz AMD processor and 128Mb of RAM. After a reboot and subsequent logon, there is pretty much no physical memory left, and as soon as you try to launch any applications, it starts swapping to the hard disk and slows to a crawl. Ok so there maybe an antivirus program running in the background which takes up about 6 megs of memory but the minimum spec is fairly useless!

I think the idiots that write the minimum specs should get into the real world and actually suggest something that enables you to end up with a usable system - not one that is slows to a crawl due to the swapping to and from the hard disk.

Also these run at 800x600 and Windows XP with the themes switched on is very cramped up at 800x600.

In my opinion, the minimum specs for Windows XP would be ...

500Mhz minimum processor speed

256Mb or more of RAM (although technically possible to run on 64/128Mb it would result in dreadful performance and constant swapping to disk)

1024x768 resolution display, but would work at 800x600 (but it would be very cramped)

CD/DVD Drive

56k modem for internet access (what's with all that 14.4k modem, does anyone actually use those very slow modems anymore?) but ideally broadband for downloading all those patches and service packs.

[cwathen]

I think the idiots that write the minimum specs should get into the real world and actually suggest something that enables you to end up with a usable system - not one that is slows to a crawl due to the swapping to and from the hard disk.

The people who devise minimum specs are in the real world, that's why they are underquoted. In the real world, no one wants to spend money on anything, and the thought of having to shell out on system upgrade costs (especially since most people will not feel competent enough to do it themselves and will have to pay extortionate third party prices - have you seen what PC World charge to fit an extra DIMM in your PC?) will only turn them away, especially when the high cost of the operating system is factored in.

If something really would benefit from 256MB of RAM, but could function with less, and it's a world where that lesser amount is more commonplace, then the lower figure will be quoted.

And to be fair, I don't think Microsoft do underquote much now, I think they get it more or less right, having made some big blunders at either end of the scale; Windows really needs a hard disk to be much use. The first version of Windows was honest and stipulated it. Unfortunately, it was a world when few people had hard disks - they had twin floppy systems instead. Result: Windows 2.0 was retooled so it could be installed to two floppy disks, even though performance from this setup was poor.

At the other end of the scale, Microsoft made sure Windows 95 would run inside 4MB of RAM and on a 20Mhz processor, even though it was virtually unusable on this spec.

I think now they get it more or less right, and were one of the first developers to widely adopt the now commonplace two tiered 'minimum' and 'recommended' system requirements.

Turning to the specific example you quoted, Windows XP can't run adequately on a 500Mhz machine with 128MB of RAM? They must have a lot of additional crap running in the background then, because I've had it running just fine on machines with lower spec than this. When I first got XP and went through my brief flirtation with it, it was installed on my old computer - a machine with an AMD K6-2 400Mhz processor and 96MB of RAM (and just to slow it down more, 32MB of it was nicked from that machine's predecessor and was PC66 RAM, which meant the whole motherboard only ran at 2/3 of it's normal speed - it was a PC100 board). Yes I've undeniably seen better performance, but it ran well enough on this spec.

And more recently, I've just upgraded my cousin's computer from (the awful) Windows ME to XP. It is a K6-2 450 which had 64MB RAM. In an ideal world, some serious upgrading would take place first, but they couldn't afford to spend much on upgrades, so I suggested that they get another 64MB DIMM to give them 128MB of RAM. They did this, and I then installed XP for them. It runs just fine - I've even got Office 2003 going on it too.

[Neil Jones]

The people who devise minimum specs are in the real world, that's why they are underquoted. In the real world, no one wants to spend money on anything, and the thought of having to shell out on system upgrade costs (especially since most people will not feel competent enough to do it themselves and will have to pay extortionate third party prices - have you seen what PC World charge to fit an extra DIMM in your PC?) will only turn them away, especially when the high cost of the operating system is factored in.

Quick gander at pcworld.co.uk - £49.99 for the in-Home upgrade package excluding cost of upgrade items. I'm assuming that charge covers one visit or set of upgrades done at the same time so it's clearly an utter waste of money to get Fred the engineer out of PC World to come and stick a CD Writer in, especially when you consider you pay for the writer and the £50 for Fred to come and put it in. Or any piece of hardware come to that.

It's a shame really because I've seen a very nice looking CD/DVD Combi drive on Novatech which I'm thinking about buying in the New Year. Only £35. Yet if I didn't self teach myself about the insides of the computer from the internet, I'd be looking at probably an overpriced product from PC World + £50 to get them to install it, let's say £100 overall. Lot of money.

[cwathen]

PC World is a very odd outfit. Some of their brownbox components are really competitively priced - atm they are doing some OEM 10/100 ethernet cards for £4.99, you can't even get them that cheap on mail order. Yet some things are ludicrously overpriced; in the summer I was doing a job for someone one evening and needed an IDE cable. I normally go to my favourite back street computer shop and shell out £1.50 for one. But it was 7PM and PC World were all that were open, their IDE cables cost almost £20! Unbelievable. Technical knowledge is amazingly variable to, some people clearly have a good working knowledge and know what they are talking about, others so clearly have a 'i've been on the 1 morning a week for 6 weeks training course' level of knowledge - when pressed on anything, or questioned on anything over a couple of years old, they haven't got a clue (yes I'm afraid I do delight in going into PC World and asking awkward questions to see if they are able to answer them).

[James Martin]

Agreed - Windows ME is a pile of poo!

I did try to install Windows 2000 on our desktop machine which still uses ME but it didn't want it. I think the family are kicking it out this year so we don't have to wait too long!

[Pete]

I found ME more zippier than 98 on my old PC - maybe it's because it was an upgrade and not a clean isntall.

cwanten - have you ever tried going into Dixons and complaining about widescreen TVs being set up wrong? Now that's always fun.