Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 19th Oct 2012 20:07 UTC
Interesting little tidbit from the Reddit AMA session with Microsoft's Surface team. One Redditor wondered just how much disk space Windows RT takes up - in other words, if you buy the 32GB Surface RT tablet, how much space is left for your stuff? It turns out that while Windows 8 RT is considerably smaller than its Windows 7 x86 predecessor, it's still huge by mobile standards.
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RE: It could have been better
by kompak on Sat 20th Oct 2012 06:57
in reply to "It could have been better"
Member since:2011-06-14
RE: It could have been better
by segedunum on Sat 20th Oct 2012 22:29
in reply to "It could have been better"
Member since:2005-07-06
Of course 12GB is too much, but it's actually better than other choice: not having a Windows ARM version at all.
Why? No one cares about Windows on ARM. People care about Windows purely because of the installed base of x86 specific applications. Beyond that there isn't much use for it.
That means Microsoft has not actually done much to reduce this clutter, except for porting the code to ARM (which is important by itself).
I'm not convinced they can do much about it. Windows is an interconnected homogeneous system. You take it or leave it.
RE[2]: It could have been better
by j-kidd on Sun 21st Oct 2012 00:41
in reply to "RE: It could have been better"
Member since:2005-07-06
I'm not convinced they can do much about it. Windows is an interconnected homogeneous system. You take it or leave it.
I just did some testing with Windows Server 2008 R2 yesterday. A normal installation takes 12GB, while a core installation takes 2GB only.
If WinRT didn't have to pull in all the desktop stuffs, I think it would be much smaller.
RE: It could have been better
by MollyC on Mon 22nd Oct 2012 03:22
in reply to "It could have been better"
Member since:2006-07-04
RE[2]: It could have been better
by segedunum on Tue 23rd Oct 2012 07:59
in reply to "RE: It could have been better"
Member since:2005-07-06
RE: It could have been better
by bnolsen on Mon 22nd Oct 2012 08:00
in reply to "It could have been better"
Member since:2006-01-06
RE[2]: It could have been better
by zima on Fri 26th Oct 2012 23:19
in reply to "RE: It could have been better"
Member since:2005-07-06
Any company in position, with such possibilities, would probably act more or less similar. And anyway, their competition was also simply stupid and/or a worse choice: http://www.osnews.com/thread?522221 (plus, Gang of Nine preferred to deal with MS than yield to IBM)
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Google added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/15/13 23:03 UTC
"During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.More News »
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2006-11-19
Of course 12GB is too much, but it's actually better than other choice: not having a Windows ARM version at all.
I've checked my current Windows 7 installation with TreeSize (great utlity btw). I have 64 bit windows, Office 2010 + 2013 Beta + Visual Studio, and a bunch of other things.
This is the breakdown:
28GB Windows
- 8.5G Installer files
- 8GB WinSxS (backwards compatibility)
- 3.6GB System32
- 2GB Assembly (.net native images for v2 and v4 for both 32 and 64 bits)
- 1.2GB temp
- 1.2GB SysWOW64 (32 bits compatibility)
- 1GB Software Distribution
- 1GB Microsoft.Net
- 500MB Fonts
- and the rest totals less than 1GB
10GB System Volume Information (shadow copies and system restore)
1.3GB MSOCache (Office setup files)
I've skipped over program files, and user data
Out of these system files, at least 32GB of ~40GB is redundant and useless stuff (for example I don't need 4 different versions of .Net).
Even if we included Office in this mix (it usually takes ~2GB installation space), we'd still have a total of 10-11GB actual useful non-redundant resources.
That means Microsoft has not actually done much to reduce this clutter, except for porting the code to ARM (which is important by itself).