# How much RAM does Windows 7 really need?



## newtekie1 (Nov 21, 2009)

I got board and decided to find out, I know I was surprised by the results:

The minimum "requirement" according to Microsoft is 1024MB, so lets start with slightly less than that 768MB:







Ok how about 512MB:






That worked, but we have to be getting close, lets try 384MB:






Wow, can believe it still works, lets try 256MB:






It still boots and runs, lets try 192MB:






Can't believe it is still working, lets try 160MB:






Wow, lets go for 128MB:






BAM...well I guess 128MB was asking a bit much, but I can't believe Win7 will run on only 160MB of RAM.  Granted, it was not running well, trust me, but it did boot and run.  Surprisingly it actually ran pretty decently on 512MB and above, it wasn't super snappy, but it was usable.  Makes me wonder why the picked 1GB as the minimum.  Probably to stop all those people with less than 1GB from complaing about it being slow...


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## erocker (Nov 21, 2009)

Thanks a lot for this!  I'll be putting 7 on my PC at the office now. (1gb s754 system)


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## Mussels (Nov 21, 2009)

bit pointless on the testing so low, but yeah it runs fine on 1GB of ram for non gamers.

512MB is the lowest i'd use 7 on a machine with, but it'd have to be for light use only (old laptop for web use/office work, for example)


my mums machine is a 754 sempron with 1GB DDR 333, and it runs just fine for her needs.


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## theonedub (Nov 21, 2009)

I found it to be choppy with 1gb. I run 2gb and 4gb in my rigs and its smooth as can be. Can't tell a difference between when I was running 8gb and 6gb.


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## vaiopup (Nov 21, 2009)

Pointless thread.

Who runs Windows but NO APPLICATIONS???

Windows may not need much but your programmes need some.
Bet you couldn't even load Firefox


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## Inioch (Nov 21, 2009)

vaiopup said:


> Pointless thread.



Pointless threads are sometimes the most fun to follow 

And there is a certain point here, if you can get Windows itself to run on such a low amount of memory, it means you can use it on low memory machines and still be able to run programs.

The man said it didn't run that well, but was ok above 512. That means 512 is what Windows needs to run well and with say 1GB of mem, you can run the whole system nicely.

There are always those who say that more memory is better (and with this I don't mean you vaio). But then again, many say that when you have 4-6gb, it is enough for almost anything except A/V editing.

All in all, thanks newtekie, this was interesting


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## WhiteLotus (Nov 21, 2009)

Kind of agree with vaiopup, but does allow those that don't have decent spec computers to run W7 on their computers. I recently had a problem with my set up that caused me to test each stick of RAM and i can say going from 4GB to 1GB was painfully slow.

But yes, at least it works.


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## RejZoR (Nov 21, 2009)

I was running Win7 on netbook with 1GB of RAM and it was just as fast if not faster than WinXP.
If only wireless wasn't randomly falling down, i'd be still using it...


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## skylamer (Nov 21, 2009)

gratz *nice review!!!! *


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## Mussels (Nov 21, 2009)

RejZoR said:


> I was running Win7 on netbook with 1GB of RAM and it was just as fast if not faster than WinXP.
> If only wireless wasn't randomly falling down, i'd be still using it...



i keep hearing a lot about windows 7 dropping wireless connections, but haven't found any solid info on it


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## DonInKansas (Nov 21, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Makes me wonder why the picked 1GB as the minimum.  Probably to stop all those people with less than 1GB from complaing about it being slow...



Because when Vista dropped, they made the huge mistake of allowing 512mb machines to be labeled "Vista Ready" or whatver.  My brother in law made the mistake of buying one of those machines and wondered why the hell it was so slow.  I cured that with 2gb of RAM and voila!  Vista wasn't such "a pain in the ass" anymore...

Well, after that AND disabling UAC


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## newtekie1 (Nov 21, 2009)

vaiopup said:


> Pointless thread.
> 
> Who runs Windows but NO APPLICATIONS???
> 
> ...



Usually things done out of bordem often are pointless...

The point was the find out how little RAM Win7 would boot with, so it actually did have a point.

And actually I tested openning IE and surfing a little all the way down to 256MB.  IE definitely wasn't instant on openning, took about 15 seconds with 256MB of RAM, it was almost instant with 512MB, but it did open and once it was open surfing wasn't too bad.  I wouldn't use firefox though, as it eats memory like candy.  I almost think 256MB would be usable for basic office tasks with readyboost enabled.  Of course, my setup was still being backed by a Quad-Core Xeon, well at least two of the cores of a Quad-Core Xeon virtualized...

Below 256MB, even getting the system properties box to come up took way to long, so I didn't even bother waiting for IE to load.


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## niko084 (Nov 21, 2009)

Mussels said:


> i keep hearing a lot about windows 7 dropping wireless connections, but haven't found any solid info on it



I am actually finding quite the opposite with the Lenovo notebooks I sell, I have issues with the wireless under XP.

I'll blame it on broadcom. 

As for the ram, lol cool test.

My opinion.. 1GB is minimum for Windows 7, and somewhere around a P4 3.0 cpu power.
That seems to make it quicker than Windows Xp, get much below that and you start really dragging your feet.


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## vaiopup (Nov 21, 2009)

I have run Vista for 2 years with one gigoram.....most of that taken up by DC projects.
A little sluggish at times but usable.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 21, 2009)

Wow, all right, maybe I will install it on teh girlfriends 1GB lappy after all. Thanks!


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## RejZoR (Nov 21, 2009)

Mussels said:


> i keep hearing a lot about windows 7 dropping wireless connections, but haven't found any solid info on it



Well, i thought that heat is the reason. Because once i've disabled Aero Glass and enhanced the CPU cooler (added BGA heatsinks inside Aspire One CPU cooler), it worked much better and connection dropped only once. Not ideal, but still much much better.

If anyone else manages to get any other solid solution for this, i'd be happy to hear it (if it's not heat).


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## vaiopup (Nov 21, 2009)

vaiopup said:


> Pointless thread.
> 
> Who runs Windows but NO APPLICATIONS???
> 
> ...




Why is the above an infraction????
Having an opinion is against forum policy???

Here's an infraction for you......some of the rules are so petty and the administration so anal!!!

If freedom of speech is illegal in this forum you may as well save my keyboard and ban me now


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## Wrigleyvillain (Nov 21, 2009)

You have no right to freedom of speech in a privately held entity such as TPU.


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## sneekypeet (Nov 21, 2009)

back on topic please.


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## Geofrancis (Nov 21, 2009)

windows 7 uses about the same amount of ram as vista. 

for any pc my general rule is 1gb ram per core or hyper threaded virtual core for xp/vista/7. it might sound a lot but when i was running my bionc client with 4 tasks on my atom 330 dual core with hyper threading for 4 virtual core it used up the 2gb ram all the time because of the 4 threads using just over 500mb ram each then ground to a halt.


as for cpu's 7 is a little sluggish on an intel atom 1.6ghz single core and runs fine on any dual core cpu (inc atom) and any  athlon 64 up or pentium 4/M up.


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## t77snapshot (Nov 21, 2009)

160MB of ram that is impressive! Lets see Vista do that....


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## Agility (Nov 21, 2009)

Vista is gonna crash soo bad on 160mb, let alone 256.


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## Munki (Nov 21, 2009)

You could have 16gigs of RAM and Vista would crash (eventually) simply because its Vista.


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## Mussels (Nov 22, 2009)

vaiopup said:


> Why is the above an infraction????
> Having an opinion is against forum policy???
> 
> Here's an infraction for you......some of the rules are so petty and the administration so anal!!!
> ...



"inciting argument: Flaming" is the reason you were given.


You seem to like posting in threads with non-constructive criticism, with off topic posts that can lead to nowhere but infractions.

as wrigley said: this is a private forum. you follow the rules, or you get banned from the premises.


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## Taz100420 (Nov 22, 2009)

I installed 7 on my friends lappy with 2 GB of ram and boy is it MUCH faster than Vista lol. But I havent had a problem with it dropping my wireless network at anytime. Its even a Broadcom adapter too. But my Vista has NEVER crashed on me (Knocks on wood) and its never really been slow either. I may think about putting 7 on my system but am iffy lol.

But it does crash on my moms puter when tryin to watch a video, I think it may be the graphics driver tho


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## newtekie1 (Nov 23, 2009)

RejZoR said:


> Well, i thought that heat is the reason. Because once i've disabled Aero Glass and enhanced the CPU cooler (added BGA heatsinks inside Aspire One CPU cooler), it worked much better and connection dropped only once. Not ideal, but still much much better.
> 
> If anyone else manages to get any other solid solution for this, i'd be happy to hear it (if it's not heat).



I haven't had any issues with the wireless on my netbook, but I have had problems with the wired connection on my main desktop.  Seems to be a common problem with nVidia boards.  I had to disable recieving side scaling under the properties for my network adaptor in device manager.

Maybe there is something similar with some wireless connections.



Geofrancis said:


> windows 7 uses about the same amount of ram as vista.
> 
> for any pc my general rule is 1gb ram per core or hyper threaded virtual core for xp/vista/7. it might sound a lot but when i was running my bionc client with 4 tasks on my atom 330 dual core with hyper threading for 4 virtual core it used up the 2gb ram all the time because of the 4 threads using just over 500mb ram each then ground to a halt.
> 
> ...



It doesn't really seem all that sluggish to me really on my single core atom netbook, but I do have 2GB of RAM.  I'm actually quite impressed with Win7 performance on lower end systems.


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## JTS (Nov 23, 2009)

This is the lowest CPU/RAM I've seen someone install Seven on:



96MB

Why?  The simple man answer is - because we can


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 23, 2009)

Mussels said:


> i keep hearing a lot about windows 7 dropping wireless connections, but haven't found any solid info on it



I've seemingly had this issue with my modern (Core 2 Duo) laptop's wireless. I don't really use laptops anymore and the laptop has a dual-core Intel and NVIDIA graphics, so I installed it in my bathroom under the sink where it runs 24/7 folding/crunching (and using my wireless to download WUs) and not bothering me. Every few days it seems that I will check on the laptop and my wireless connection will be at "limited or no connectivity" and it only seems to be fixed by rebooting the laptop or (rarely) power cycling the router (as my iPod will still be working fine on WiFi most of the time) Still dunno if it is hardware or software (using Intel 4965AGN in laptop and Netgear WNR3500 N router, which I dropped down to G because my hardware revision sucks and drops all the time on N mode and WPA2).


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## A Cheese Danish (Nov 23, 2009)

JTS said:


> This is the lowest CPU/RAM I've seen someone install Seven on:
> View attachment 30799
> 
> 96MB
> ...



That is badassary! Personally wouldn't waste my time with that, but that is awesome nonetheless


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 23, 2009)

JTS said:


> This is the lowest CPU/RAM I've seen someone install Seven on:
> View attachment 30799
> 
> 96MB
> ...



Reminds me of when I installed Windows 2000 Pro on a 486DX 66, 48MB FPM RAM, 500MB HDD, 256KB VGA card and 0KB L2 cache ram because my board was retarded and would either run lots of RAM and no cache chips or little amouts of RAM and 64KB cache. Man did that suck.


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## somebody (Nov 26, 2009)

I get the impression that with Vista the people at MS envisaged computers with high amounts of RAM so they were not very conservative of how they used it. Windows Seven seems to have done a better job with memory management.

IIRC Windows 7 checks that 512MB, or somewhere around there, is available before going ahead with installing so some messing around would be required for machines with less than this amount.

With the older HW I would guess less drivers are needed to get it up and running so this would favour the older machines with small memory. 

Using a virtual machine and its basic emulated HW, 92MB seems doable for using IE and very basic software. With safe-mode and it's reduced driver list 48MB gets to the desktop, 53MB if networking is required.

IMHO though, I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to want to operate Windows 7 at such low levels.


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## Mussels (Nov 26, 2009)

somebody said:


> IMHO though, I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to want to operate Windows 7 at such low levels.



true, but its handy to know should you have to RMA your ram and buy something for the interim


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## lemonadesoda (Nov 26, 2009)

vaiopup said:


> Pointless thread. Who runs Windows but NO APPLICATIONS???
> 
> Windows may not need much but your programmes need some. Bet you couldn't even load Firefox



Not pointless, just maybe missing some important aspects: like running a basic set of applications.

I also wonder if the VIRTUALIZED test might be missing something. I'm not sure that a virtualized OS has exactly the same footprint as an on-the-metal installation.  Could be wrong... I've only VMwared Windows onto OSX. But in that instance, the Windows footprint was a lot smaller than on a bare install.

I agree with vaiopup... the analysis would be better if newteckie had established what the "working criteria" are, e.g. Office XP, ethernet connection, IE, and printer. Perhaps someone here has Win7 installed on a machine populated with 256MB sticks... and can do a chip pull and see what happens. 

At a single stick of 256MB, loss of dual channel, on an older machine, I'm sure Win7 is a no-go in any practical sense. 

W2K3 works quite happily in 256MB on a P3 laptop incl. MS office. But it is at the tipping point... If W2K3 can do it, I'm sure W7 can _nearly _do it, so I'm sure you would be good to go with 512MB.


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 26, 2009)

From what I understand a lot of legacy support was dropped in 7 > smaller core, so if you take out all useless features with vlite/manually it probably boots on less.


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## wolf (Nov 26, 2009)

Good writeup newtekie, and I think I know why they still say 1gb is minimum, aside from the obvious lack of ram to store application data blah blah blah in.

Ive tried to install 64 bit on a machine with 1 gb, BABOW no dice, it literlaly stops and saus NO, YOU NEED 2 GB, which is min for 64 bit, I imagine with 32 bit, if you have less than 1024mb total, it will stop you at the install screen and say a big NO.

other than that, good testing man, and funny thread, informative, and I got a laugh from the BSOD pic, it was going so well!

hey with you netbook, hows it run? I've installed 7 32 bit on a eee 1000H with 2gb ram and it runs friggen sweetly, much better than I expected, aero and all, I was even playing an episode (0ver wireless), and windows+tab'ing (with many screens open including net) and the video was still playing flawlessly in win+tab.

hats off to M$ on this one rly.


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## somebody (Nov 26, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> I also wonder if the VIRTUALIZED test might be missing something.


It's missing a lot , that's what makes it a good candidate for low memory. I believe my laptop being just over a year old has too much hardware to be able to run natively at such low memory but then recent gear tends to have a fair bit more RAM to start with. The virtual machine was set up for just very basic stuff including audio and internet. It's probably a bit too simple but I wanted something closer to an older system.





Notice how it's using 300MB+ of swap space or pagefile to get it all working. I can't help thinking the virtual machine was caching some of the virtual drive as it seemed to run a lot quicker than I would have expected or maybe I just underestimated it.



lemonadesoda said:


> Perhaps someone here has Win7 installed on a machine populated with 256MB sticks... and can do a chip pull and see what happens.


No real need to do it that way. You can copy the configuration using BCDEdit and call it something like "Testing low RAM" then use the 'truncatememory' option to limit the memory. Same effect.



DanTheBanjoman said:


> From what I understand a lot of legacy support was dropped in 7 > smaller core, so if you take out all useless features with vlite/manually it probably boots on less.


I think you might be right. I did download vlite but sorta lost interest when it asked to download and install a 1.3GB file  Still, I'm running Vista to, so it might be a good idea for me to take a look sometime. TBH though Vista hasn't given me any problems but then I've never tried it with less than 2-4GB of RAM.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 26, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> Not pointless, just maybe missing some important aspects: like running a basic set of applications.
> 
> I also wonder if the VIRTUALIZED test might be missing something. I'm not sure that a virtualized OS has exactly the same footprint as an on-the-metal installation.  Could be wrong... I've only VMwared Windows onto OSX. But in that instance, the Windows footprint was a lot smaller than on a bare install.
> 
> ...



This wasn't a usability test, simpley a test to see what the minimum required to boot with was.

In terms of usability, I've already gone over that.  Though I personally wouldn't want to use it with any less than 1GB, 2GB preferred.  At 256MB, it was extremely sluggish with openning programs, though I wonder if this is one of those instances where readyboost would actually show a drastic improvement...

A virtualized machine has the same footprint as Win7 installed on a real machine, as far as Win7 knows, it is installed on a real machine, so there would be no reason for it to have a smaller footprint.



wolf said:


> Good writeup newtekie, and I think I know why they still say 1gb is minimum, aside from the obvious lack of ram to store application data blah blah blah in.
> 
> Ive tried to install 64 bit on a machine with 1 gb, BABOW no dice, it literlaly stops and saus NO, YOU NEED 2 GB, which is min for 64 bit, I imagine with 32 bit, if you have less than 1024mb total, it will stop you at the install screen and say a big NO.
> 
> ...



My netbook runs great, I was very surprised at how it ran.  The best thing was that it found almost all the drivers, and the special ASUS utilities actually worked(Super Hybrid Engine and hot keys), unlike in Vista.


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## wolf (Nov 27, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> My netbook runs great, I was very surprised at how it ran.  The best thing was that it found almost all the drivers, and the special ASUS utilities actually worked(Super Hybrid Engine and hot keys), unlike in Vista.



the lack of need for driver install is yet another thing that blew me away, they really have a gem on their hands this time.


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## lemonadesoda (Nov 27, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> A virtualized machine has the same footprint as Win7 installed on a real machine, as far as Win7 knows, it is installed on a real machine, so there would be no reason for it to have a smaller footprint.



That's not my experience. A VM application on the host provides passthrough drivers for the guest install. That also makes the guest virtual machine portable. You dont install raw OEM graphics, audio, network, usb drivers "into" the guest. The guest is therefore smaller than a bare metal.


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## Mussels (Nov 27, 2009)

somebody said:


> I think you might be right. I did download vlite but sorta lost interest when it asked to download and install a 1.3GB file



yeah, MS wont let them use the .dll anymore, so they link you to a 1.3GB MS redist to get it.

you can just google for the missing .dll, download it and stick it in the folder and it works just fine


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## i789 (Nov 27, 2009)

win7 cant run on 128mb ram, definitely not as good as win98


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## Mussels (Nov 27, 2009)

i789 said:


> win7 cant run on 128mb ram, definitely not as good as win98



i always liked windows 2000 on low ram systems


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## mastrdrver (Nov 27, 2009)

I've got my sisters old laptop she got new in like '07. Turion 1.6ghz, 6150 geforce, 1gb memory, and 80gb hard drive.

Installed 7 RC x64 and has been running without problems for about a month now. I just use it to cruise the internet. It's kind of clunky from what I'm use to from my i7 system. Trying to find a 2x2gb memory setup so help but I can't believe its so hard to find any deals on 2x2gb ddr2 sodimms. I usually run in the 80%+ memory usage and have aero on. I have 1 sidebar app running to show my battery life and norton security and xfire that load at startup. Very minimal things running to help internet cruising smooth out. For now, I'm living with throwing in my flash drive and use it as ready boost as it does help out quite a lot.

What's really nice is if I have the laptop on for a while, my sidebar app will slowly show more and more system memory available. I've had 7 running on as little as ~500mb of memory when just sitting idle on the desktop with all aforementioned apps running in the background.

I tried to run Vista on 1gb on my old Q9400 desktop and it just choked making it past start up telling me it could load this program because it had run out of memory space. 7 is just a massive improvement in memory management compared to Vista.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 27, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> That's not my experience. A VM application on the host provides passthrough drivers for the guest install. That also makes the guest virtual machine portable. You dont install raw OEM graphics, audio, network, usb drivers "into" the guest. The guest is therefore smaller than a bare metal.



That isn't the case, the OS still has the drivers installed, drivers are not "pass through".  The virtual machine has virtual hardware that the Guest OS installs driver for.

It is portable because the hardware is the same on every VMWare virtual machine.


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## Mussels (Nov 28, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> That isn't the case, the OS still has the drivers installed, drivers are not "pass through".  The virtual machine has virtual hardware that the Guest OS installs driver for.
> 
> It is portable because the hardware is the same on every VMWare virtual machine.



the virtual drivers would still be 'lighter' ram wise (no tray applets, very minimal by design) so his point has some merit - just not as much as he made out.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 28, 2009)

Mussels said:


> the virtual drivers would still be 'lighter' ram wise (no tray applets, very minimal by design) so his point has some merit - just not as much as he made out.



Not really, the same would apply to something like my netbook, where all the drivers were installed by Win7 by default.  There are no tray apps accociated with those either.  So the footprint on machines such as my netbook should be extremely close to those of a virtual machine.

And if you install the device drivers manually through device manager you avoid all the extra bloat, which is usually what I do in low RAM machines, even if I'm installing XP.


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## Mussels (Nov 28, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Not really, the same would apply to something like my netbook, where all the drivers were installed by Win7 by default.  There are no tray apps accociated with those either.  So the footprint on machines such as my netbook should be extremely close to those of a virtual machine.
> 
> And if you install the device drivers manually through device manager you avoid all the extra bloat, which is usually what I do in low RAM machines, even if I'm installing XP.



thats a fair point. they're about the same as drivers that come with the OS, bloat wise.


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