The odd thing is that Windows 8 minimum disk requirements are only 20 GB
(spitting coffee across room) Only 20GB!? I can get a full Linux install, including desktop, development environment, graphics editors, office suites, etc, etc, etc for less space than that! It's sad that people have come to accept "only 20GB" as "not that bad". This reeks to me of the issues MS had trying to shoehorn windows on to netbooks, and just not getting it.
The only reason this is even a story is because of Flash drives with lower capacities. On the desktop, I literally don't care about the tiny fraction of my 3 TB drive the OS is taking up.
Yes, precisely: Microsoft has never had an issue with releasing a product that eats all the RAM, CPU cycles and hard drive space it could get. Every new release of a Microsoft product had not just the pains of learning a new layout and dealing with the bugs and security holes, but also going through the upgrade cycle, yet again, because Microsoft doesn't seem to care (or be capable) of writing efficient software. Only now that storage on desktops and laptops has given us a glut of capacity do we not care.
But in the mobile space, where resources are obviously more limited, Microsoft is a joke: they are so laughably far behind the open source solutions (and Apple) designed to run stably, smoothly and without upgrades for years (decades, even), that we really shouldn't be surprised. 20GB on a desktop or laptop drive where 1000GB has been the norm for a while? Sure, no problem. But even getting Windows 7 down to 17GB so I can get it to fit (along with a few other essentials) on a 60GB SSD for my work development machine was a PITA that shouldn't be necessary. There's no excuse, even if we are "used to it."
Partly it's one of the pains of backwards compatibility. Unofrtunately Microsoft cannot, like Apple, just throw people who use its old stuff under a bus....
(spitting coffee across room) Only 20GB!? I can get a full Linux install, including desktop, development environment, graphics editors, office suites, etc, etc, etc for less space than that! It's sad that people have come to accept "only 20GB" as "not that bad". This reeks to me of the issues MS had trying to shoehorn windows on to netbooks, and just not getting it.