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Yes, no cheap tricks anymore.
Anyway, those specs are much more accurate and fitting than the specs for Vista.
Running Vista on a 1GB machine is a nightmare, but Win7 works well there.

but Vista was released in 2006... thus those requirements are much more affordable now.

This is not a word

Also IMO they're not exaggerating - those requirements really are bare minimums.

I don't really think the (real) system requirements have changed much since Vista. It might work a little more of the low-end, but the real improvement is that it has been over two years and the hardware is now more affordable.

I think a more realistic approach is an AMD64 3500 with 1gig of memory for the 32bit install and 2gig for a 64bit install (not really sure about Intel). A more realistic scenario would be to bump up the memory to 2gigs for 32bit and 4gigs for 64bit if you actually want to multitask efficiently.

In the end, however, I still believe that dual cores are needed. The good news is that everything today outside of netbooks comes with them. For netbooks, it is unlikely they will need them given that the tasks running will be mostly system based with an application or two.

I used to run Vista on my single core Sempron 3200+, and never experienced any problems; I'm just picky about the software that I use

edit: report/edit buttons are way too close to each other

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=inaggerate

More than just the opposite of exaggeration , an inaggeration is the removal of the colloquial interest which can be added to an otherwise ....

It is a bit steep. You don't actually NEED 20GB to install 64-bit. I have it installed on a 16GB partition with plenty of software and still have about 1.5GB free. It's just not ideal

it has all the 32bit stuff as well as 64bit stuff for compatibility etc..

For me, a clean 32-bit install on a 10GB partition takes up about 6.5GB including pagefile and hibernation file.

It's around 8GB at the top end for 64bit Win7 I'd guess. But if you're going to say, have lots of ram, then you need say 8GB for the OS, plus x for ram pagefile, + hibernation file, and still have room for apps and patches.

So 20GB sounds about right. 8+4+4= 16GB with 4GB for some apps and patches etc. At that setup, 20GB min sounds right.

Now I know people with 8GB of ram already, so that just boosts things even more.

When you can imagine the compatibility files (DLLs, etc) for Windows 7 to work with older hardware and solfware for 64-bit and 32-bit then you'll understand why such a large install. Really though, the days where a 1TB hard drive is $79 why are you complaining? That's less than 3% of the entire storage capacity.

Probably page file, ect. Plus a little extra space is ALWAYS good.

If you are running Windows on a Mac then I'm guessing you only use it for compatibility. If you have enough RAM (I assume you do or you wouldn’t need the 64-bit version) then you really don't need the page file at its default size if you only boot it to run one or two apps or games. If you turn it down to 1GB or so that should free up a lot of disk space. The other option is to just install the 32-bit version because the 4GB RAM limit probably isn't going to matter on something that isn't your primary OS...at least not for a few years until games start to require more. I just installed the 32-bit version in a VPC and the VHD is right at 6GB so far.

hrm maybe where yo live these hdd are at such a low price but where i live they still cost more than $250

will be the same as vista skus

Will it be? When XP was released the home version was $99 and the pro was $199. When Vista was released the Premium version was $159, business was $199 and Ultimate was $249/259.

The trouble is that Ultimate is not really going to be available at retail. Professional is basically Vista Business mixed with Premium. The suppose Microsoft could release the Pro version for $199. It would make since in a way, but would not keep up with the price increase in the home version.

I have a real fear that the professional version will be $250 and the Ultimate version will be significantly more. Otherwise, why not offer it at regular retail?

Most sales of 7 Ultimate (like Vista Ultimate) won't be as upgrade SKUs but as OEM SKUs (either with a new computer or the BYOPC crowd). Professional will pretty much replace Home Premium, while Premium will replace Basic (and be the minimum SKU in non-EU developed markets). Remember, neither Starter or Basic will be sold in developed markets. Surprisingly, Premium (not Basic) will likely be the preferred SKU for developed-market netbooks, for the simple reason that more and more netbooks will actually be able to support Aero.

Other predictions (which should be taken with a few grains of salt, of course):

1. OEM sales - For the first time ever, 64-bit editions will lead vs. 32-bit editions (this will be VERY noticeable with Ultimate and Professional).

2. Someone mentioned *bloat*; for that poster, bloat's not really much of an issue for new hardware, as large hard drives are hyper-prevalent for new computers, and the replacement market is also chockablock with them. (Bloat wasn't much of an issue with Vista, honestly.)

3. Upgrade vs. OEM - the upgrade market will largely remain soft; however, not for the same reason why it was in Vista's case. OEM SKU sales, especially 64-bit, will take off; surprisingly, the big driver won't be processor sales at first, but hard drives.

Windows 7 has cut so much out already.

They have and prices for large hard drives are very low compared to what they used to be.

*sign* always someone who has to complain about "bloat". HDDs are dirt cheap these days. If 20Gb is too much perhaps you shouldn't even be putting Windows on it to begin with?

Yep. My laptop has a 40 GB HDD in it (this laptop was released in 2004).

JunkMail, you should have no problem finding an IDE hard drive over 20 GB.

So what if HDs are larger and more affordable today than they were yesterday? There's nothing wrong with asking that operating systems be as lean and efficient as they can be. If it's a matter of choosing space required vs. features, then I'd personally opt for the features - but I don't want software makers thinking that they can get sloppy just because the average computer is fast enough that the deficiencies in the software maker's code will barely be noticable.

My programming professor had actually remarked on this point a few years ago. Back when he was a student, and computing time was shared and compiling took a long time (relative to today) there was a real incentive to make sure that your code was as efficient as it could possibly be. The programming culture today cares less about efficiency. They don't need to be so concerned with it now, of course, and they can focus on the "fun stuff" - but they should still strive to be as efficient as they can.

Windows 3.1 came on 3 floppy disks. Should Windows 7 also come on 3 fdd? I know it's a huge exageration, but that's where we're at. It's not 1995 any more.

I think people are confused in thinking all of that is actually loaded when you boot. It's only there in case you need it and I'd rather have that then something that won't work properly. Besides, I do have a 1TB Samsung F1 so and I got it for $79 shipped @ NewEgg. People really need to stop crying about install requirements.

3? The Windows 3.11 for Workgroups disks I have are 12 disks....

I actually once managed to make a very barebones boot disk with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on a single 1.44MB floppy. It booted straight to File Manager and had Notepad, and that was about it. It was still useful for doing file recovery on systems with failing hard drives.

Lean doesn't mean faster. A smaller disk footprint doesn't mean that those computers will perform faster.

1tb hdd cost about 80 bucks now, even less sometimes when you find a good sale. this is like people complaining that new games need dvd rom.

i see your point but still...

it's the point behind the OS taking up SOOO much space when it's just a operating system. you would think that 10GB would be more than enough for something like a OS.

Windows 3.1 did NOT come on 3 fdd's at all, it came on SEVEN ...... I still have the disks my friend !!!!!

Yeesh, even Ubuntu linux has a recommended minimum of 8gb of harddrive space for the install. It sounds like you're lamenting that software compiles too easily now and harddrives are too big for developers to spend time shrinking their code, but...

Isn't that a really, really good thing? Like, an incredibly good thing? Knowing that they don't have to waste valuable time and energy ( = money), instead spending all of their time on features and stability--isn't that fantastic, that software development has reached this stage?

As it has been said already, and as common sense should point out, smaller footprints do not mean faster software. Likewise, even a 40gb OS has the potential to blaze along speedily. The majority of those bytes are not loaded into memory, and thus it's completely silly to think that they're somehow dragging Windows down.

so if win7 has cut so much bloat out already then how come it still has a lot of ultra legacy drivers installed but still requires me to provide a sata/raid driver on install this habit is still bull**** if you ask me especially when it downloads an updated version from MS after the install

Last edited by rm20010 on 04 May 2009 - 20:07

perhaps he's thinking of dos6.22 and not win3.11

I have a 2004 laptop. They do make new IDE laptop drives that go up to 250GB.

And my laptop runs Vista, and I plan on testing it out with W7.

Good for you, if you want to cripple your Win7 install and prevent future updates from installing properly, go right ahead.

How about you chill out and let people do what they want? If they want to install the OS they OWN a certain way they want it, they sure as hell shouldn't listen to you telling them how to do it and if they are wrong or not.

Look who's telling who to chill out. Xerxes has a point. When you start ripping parts of the code out and install patches that may need something you've taken out, that will only screw with the stability of your system.

And for the record, you don't actually OWN windows. Only the right to install it and use it on your PC.

Lol yeah, owning Windows would earn you the right to make copies and sell it.

And yeah again, its wrong to rip apart an OS like that. You could end up having to rip apart your computer (or at least a reinstall).

Didn't Microsoft just comment on this idea where people who made Vlite versions of Vista will have issues installing SP2?

vlite did break vista, sp updates where not possible.

My 7yo POS PC ran it fine on 768MB of ram. Not smooth at times, but I could do basic day to day work and anything Internet related just fine.

Uh, laptops average between 120 and 250 GB these days. That's still enough to house this OS and your data.

They should, all current (well from the Core 2 line and onwards) have it, so I don't see why the Intel Macs wouldn't.

@Xerxes, not all of the Core 2 range have it, some of the lesser known processors don't have it, and a lot of the laptop processors don't.

@TonyLock: Look for your processor here (Intel.com), and make sure that it has a tick in the "Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)Φ" column.

Some of the lower end ultra low voltage dual cores don't have it iirc.

Run securable (http://www.grc.com/securable.htm) to test it.

For example mine

If your processor has it, sometimes you need to turn it on in the bios before it will work. My Core 2 Quad required this.

I installed Vista on a 512 system a couple of years ago. No problem and it ran smoothly. Now its running on a 1gb and 6gb system. Again no problem.

I am now laughing at those people who thought 7 would have lower requirements than Vista and claimed that its better than Vista when its actually Vista with improvements. I expect SP2 to bring Vista to par with 7.

I don't know about SP2 for vista but 7 does have lower requirements. Lots of people have said this who've used both and have installed (or tried to) Vista and 7 on older systems.

7 definitely performs better on older systems than vista ever did.

Vista is XP with improvements. Your point being? XP is NT 4.0 with improvements even. As OS X 10.5 is to 10.4.

Improvements is also a word that can refer to many things. Improvements could mean more features, it could mean better interface, it could even mean better performance. To add that dog-gone many features to an OS, and keep relatively identical requirements as a 3 year old OS is one thing, but half of the users are claiming superior responsiveness to Vista, including myself as it runs smoothly on my 512 mb laptop with a Radeon x1100 and a 1.4 GHz Turion with Aero and all effects enabled. That alone goes to show that requirements are not always the lowest you can go effectively. Remember that Vista's requirements were also extremely dubbed down due to the Intel issue and them being abnormally high for an XP seasoned market.

ok u have installed vista on 512 mb and u think its runs smooth, .. but then dare i ask... is it smooth compared to vista on 1 gb ram?

sorry, iv used systems with 512 and 1 gb on vista RTM, and all those systems were yes fine if u just boot vista, but if u install stuff like office and antivirus... thats other story.

when i say smooth it means smooth with most or all day to day software we use.

In my humble opinion (backed up with side-by-side testing of 7 RC with Vista with RTM SP2, both 64-bit), that theory is all wet. Consider that I actually *fired* Vista 64 and I'm now running 7 RC as sole operating system. Stability (especially under load) is way up (not only compared to Vista 64-bit, but Vista 32-bit as well), especially in low-RAM conditions.

point in case my friend ran vista on his 3200xp with 1.5gb ram 80gb sata hdd and yeah sure it ran ok maybe a little sluggish sometimes but now he's running win7 on the same setup and evan i can notice the difference in speed his machine is now alot more snappier than it ever was with vista sp1 it just seems to be faster i know the hardware hasn't changed but i realy do rhink that win7 uttilises the hardware it's being run on much more efficiently than vista ever did

You have to remember that an entire install of XP is included, including all updates and such, plus room for applications.

But it DOES do a lot of things better. It's easier to use, starts and shuts down faster, requires less tweaks to get it running nicely, it's more secure, it's got less legacy annoyances..the list is long. You shouldn't have to worry about it lowering your system performance, you might even find out it improves it. At least that's the case on my system.

People, note that the requirements for hard drive space are just that, requirements. It doesn't mean the OS itself takes that much space. At the moment my Windows 7 build 7068 (64-bit) folder takes about 13 GB. Add to that space for temp files, common program files and page file and the 16-20 GB requirement isn't that much.

For the record I think OSX is around that size too. The comparison to previous operating systems is poor because those didn't have anywhere near the driver support, icon sizes etc etc that today's operating systems do. Also notice that unlike XP, Vista and Win7 (or OSX for that matter) never ask for the installation CD when installing drivers.

Windows 7 is the best performing graphiical based OS that microsoft has ever created. Every application feels MUCH faster is Win 7 than in xp or vista.

Keep using a decade old out of mainstream support OS! And yes it is now on EXTENDED support. Only security fixes.

And it's quotes like that which start the whole "Don't switch to Windows Version xxxx" movements......

I hate this "If its not broken, don't fix it" mentality. This is what gives people issues and problems down the line. Sure you can stay with your 7 year old OS forever. However, you are hurting yourself. XP will never be as secure or functional as 7 is going to be. Eventually as hardware and software people stop making drivers and programs compatible with XP, you are going to be forced to upgrade anyway.

A decade old? Is it 2011 already, or do you have your own TARDIS?

Well put. It bothers me that people pull this information out of their ***es. Latest Service Pack for XP32 was rather recent and Windows XP x64 is actually a lot newer than XP32 and people should not be confusing the two.

Somehow I doubt that Vista "won't even install".

actually i have seen this happen and just last week to boot where vista actually threw a hissyfit but win7 just chugged along and finished the install and ran vista on the other hand got 80% through the install and failed this was a retail disk not oem or pirated previous os was winxp home

if the win7 prices are anything like what the vista pricing was like here in New Zealand then i think MS might be trying to push **** up hill, consider this at release a retail copy of windows vista home prem $599.95nzd ultimate $995.95nzd that sort of pricing just put a ton of people off evan now vista ultimate is still $445.52nzd

Last edited by rm20010 on 04 May 2009 - 20:11

After installing Service Pack 1 in Vista you were able to use sp1cln.exe in cmd. But this is only for cleaning files that were left over from the SP installation.

So, use the Cleanup utility or even better CCleaner.

oh please, why don't you just time travel to the stone age and live there.
XP is 8 years old, you need to exit from hibernation.

Then stick with XP. It's not like Microsoft is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to upgrade.

If this is what is important to you, then stick with XP! Nobody is forcing you to move to 7.

Windows XP64 has actually been released in 2005.
Service Pack 3 for XP32 has been released in like 2008, I think.

Using 185.xx drivers, and April Realtek Drivers, etc.

This Stone Age can run GTAIV and Crysis, and does not have that much DRM.

... how do you define "Power User?" -- With Photoshop??!!

Don't tell me your processor is slower than 1GHz and you don't have the RAM or disk space. As far as speed goes betas of Windows 7 have been benchmarked all over the place and show it to be faster than XP.

Oh and the Crysis thing is really tired.

For me, a power user is a person who knows his or her way around the system. You know, basic stuff, like removing useless dependencies in services, disabling dynamic link libraries, knowing what exactly starts with his/her system and having full control over it, removing Viruses manually, going without a virus for half a year at least while connected to the internet, etc.

I am not sure what you mean by Photoshop - I have Photoshop, Illustrator, and Bridge CS3 installed on my System. These programs are performance and memory hogs to put it lightly - if you have enough layers in a 600DPi image - Photoshop will be using like 1GB minimum. 170MB for Windows XP + 1GB + 600MB FireFox Open - the RAM usage adds up quickly, now if it wasn't XP, add another 600MB to the equation - scratch disks would be used more often with 7, hindering performance. Now, what I mean by PS running slow is actually different, I mean that it opens up a new document slower.

@m.keeley - actually it is two cloacked at 2400 Mhz.

Now describe the "DRM" that Vista does have.

In what way?
1. CPU requirements - A P4 (heck, even a P-III) can run Windows 7 (or Vista 32-bit) for basic tasks. This is no more than XP32 requires.

2. RAM requirements - You don't have 512 MB of RAM? (That's the *recommended* minimum for XP, and the bare-minimum for Vista or 7 32-bit.) I have an old Gateway laptop that came with that little (upgradable to 1 GB). Given a USB thumb drive, I could upgrade the same laptop to Vista (or 7, for that matter); it lacks a DVD drive.

3. Graphics requirements: For Aero, you need DX 9c; this is only an issue for portables (laptops, notebooks, and netbooks) as desktops (even those with only PCI slots available) can upgrade to DX10. If you don't game, even that's a non-issue.

4. Drive space requirements - again, not really an issue (except for portables, and depending on the age of the laptop/note/netbook, rather easily fixable, as large hard drives for the portable crowd are dropping in price; see Western Digital's Scorpio line).

5. None of my own applications requires either Vista or 7, either (same applies to my hardware). XP supports all my applications and hardware; some of it is supported even in Windows 2000 Professional. I upgraded (first to Vista, and now to 7) for reasons of *increased stability*; not looks/appearance.

Ok stick with XP. Why do you feel the need to tell everyone you like XP more and to try to get everyone else to stay on an ancient OS?

I am a performance freak, the less something requires, the more power there is to other components.

* Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
* At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
* At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
* CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
* Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
* Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution
* Sound card
* Speakers or headphones

That is the XP Minimum System Requirements.

Don't start with the DRM bull****. Windows Vista/7 support DRM media like HD-DVD, Blu-ray and so on, Linux and OS X (can't do that, yet..).

Enough of this crap.

Windows 7 has a faster GUI, why? Because it's done by the graphics card, and not the CPU.

Search speed is faster than XP.

Gaming speed is onpar with XP.

Photoshop runs brilliantly here!

remember most people are NOT power users, they hardy know to to use eBay let again anything else

I presume it will be at least partly because there's an overhead when running 32bit apps.

That's not correct, the reason why 64bit needs more RAM is because it's code base is bigger.

True to a point but, unless something has changed that I've not read about/forgotten, in order to run 32 bit code it goes through WoW 64 (Windows on Windows not World of Warcraft!) which must have an memory overhead.

this post screams MY E-PEEN STROKE IT PLZ.

but, if it is not that kind of post, I think 7 will run just fine on your system.

with that you'll probably run win7 rather well infact probably better than vista

no.. seriously.. it really was a very honest question.. It is my work rig, and was not really trying to get any kind of "satisfaction" from any kind of reply like your own.. but I thought it was funny.. and you still managed to answer my question in the long run.. thank you

thanks for your reply... I wonder why a latter OS could run more effentiently than an older OS "Vista" ?

Will my Neuralnet processor cpu (a learning computer) run Win7?

to be able to run both 64bit and 32bit apps without the need of using a virtual machine running a 32bit os (wow64 is like virtual machine for 32bit apps) as well as a host of other virtualised parts of the os for security and performace reasons