Oh ! No ! Yet Another Microbloat Critical Update !

[Viking]

The patch is Q817287, 332 kB. This patch is meant to help XP with recovering automatically in case of errors.

The nice little thing changed and/or deleted some dll(?) files.

[Wain]

An OS that supports locking out the fellow in front of it has merit in an office environment where the company handles sensitive data and theft is a real concern. However, the ability to lock out the end user is inappropriate in an operating system used in the home.

I strongly disagree.  A lot of people who use their computers for several things in their home do use them also for sensitive data, I personally greatly appreciate being able to lock out the other people in my home because I don't want them messing up my stuff.  I'm currently working on a suite (music), and although I have backups, the majority of my data is on my hard drive, and I would be greatly p.o.'ed if anyone in my home got onto my computer and installed any old spyware/AOL software/ or other unstable crap on my machine because they didn't know any better, and in turn threatened the stability of my machine, or the integrity of what I am working on.

It's not always about theft, it's just as much about people getting on the internet and installing 15 different Instant messengers on your machine when you're not looking.

[the_leander]

Even though the original install took about 3 Gigs of space it has grown this large in no time at all.

Hmmm! Well thats another reason for me not to "upgrade" from win2k pro.... I thought it was huge at 1.1Gb with everything selected to install....

Win2k= NT5 WinXP=5.1 So where the hell has this extra 2Gb come from? It's not as though XP runs any services that Win2k doesn't afaik so what the hell is taking all that extra room???

Even with all the current service packs you can get for Win2k you're still well under 1.5Gb...

2Gb??? Thats 4 DivX feature films.

Even with a half dozen iso's, a handfull of DivX movies, and several hundred apps with BeOS I'm inside 9Gb... I suspect if I pulled all the ISOs, and DivX's I'd be under 5Gb.

Even Win2k with countless apps, a half dozen games and several large demos on it I'm only just over 7Gb

Win95 was 50Mb or therabouts with the first edition, the same as BeOS with all the dev tools installed.... so I got to ask where all this extra wieght is comming from with WinXP

[tony23]

Hi leander,

 I should clarify that my XP Pro is the IBM version and not the regular XP or XP Pro ,this could be some of the reason for the extra bloat as IBM includes some of their own software in the package. But it does seem odd that it is so huge.

My Amiga OS2.1 system is about 20Mb with a lot of patches and other stuff thrown in there. Big difference compared to XP.

 You'd think things would get smaller in a more technically advanced world. But no.... they bloat to humungus proportions.  :-P

[mikeymike]

You'd think things would get smaller in a more technically advanced world. But no.... they bloat to humungus proportions.

:-)

Actually, if you twist it a bit, it makes perfect sense.  The hardware gets smaller, yes, the software becomes bigger/more capable, of course!

[jeffimix]

I'll admit it, 640Kb RAM wasn't standard for quite a while...