Rewriting the core code of its operating system to bring down its hunger for resources.
Do you think Windows Vista is a monster when it comes to eating up space of your hard drive and leaving huge footprint on your RAM? You are absolutely right. Realising this and paying heed to feedbacks from customers, Microsoft has now given a glimpse of how big its next OS could be. Eric Traut, distinguished engineer and director of development (Windows Kernel and Virtualization team), Microsoft, demonstrated through a video something they call 'MinWin'. And compared to the core code of the monster Vista which eats up almost 4GB of disk, MinWin sips only 25MB, without a graphical interface. Microsoft is working on bringing it down further. (Click here to watch the full video and check some of the features of MinWin. Courtesy:University of Illinois)
MinWin will form a part of Microsoft's next operating system, named Windows 7, which would succeed Vista. According to various reports, the product is in its initial stages and is scheduled to be launched in 2010.
Clearing the air about resource-hungry Windows operating system, Traut said in the video, "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system, and that may be a fair characterisation, I have to admit. But at its core, the kernel, and the components that make up the very core of the operating system, is actually pretty streamlined."
Not only with hard drive, MinWin is a miser with memory as well. Reportedly, it needs only 40 MB (let me repeat, only 40MB) of RAM. Microsoft is pushing the envelop further so its kernel gets shrunk to a size which would allow it to be useful on a range of devices including embedded devices.
Traut was speaking at the 13th annual computing conference: Reflections | Projections, hosted by The Association for Computing Machinery at the University of Illinois. The event aimed at bringing together students from across the country to gain a broader perspective on computer science, in the presence of some of the great minds of today and yesterday.
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Do you think Windows Vista is a monster when it comes to eating up space of your hard drive and leaving huge footprint on your RAM? You are absolutely right. Realising this and paying heed to feedbacks from customers, Microsoft has now given a glimpse of how big its next OS could be. Eric Traut, distinguished engineer and director of development (Windows Kernel and Virtualization team), Microsoft, demonstrated through a video something they call 'MinWin'. And compared to the core code of the monster Vista which eats up almost 4GB of disk, MinWin sips only 25MB, without a graphical interface. Microsoft is working on bringing it down further. (Click here to watch the full video and check some of the features of MinWin. Courtesy:University of Illinois)
MinWin will form a part of Microsoft's next operating system, named Windows 7, which would succeed Vista. According to various reports, the product is in its initial stages and is scheduled to be launched in 2010.
Clearing the air about resource-hungry Windows operating system, Traut said in the video, "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system, and that may be a fair characterisation, I have to admit. But at its core, the kernel, and the components that make up the very core of the operating system, is actually pretty streamlined."
Not only with hard drive, MinWin is a miser with memory as well. Reportedly, it needs only 40 MB (let me repeat, only 40MB) of RAM. Microsoft is pushing the envelop further so its kernel gets shrunk to a size which would allow it to be useful on a range of devices including embedded devices.
Traut was speaking at the 13th annual computing conference: Reflections | Projections, hosted by The Association for Computing Machinery at the University of Illinois. The event aimed at bringing together students from across the country to gain a broader perspective on computer science, in the presence of some of the great minds of today and yesterday.
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