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Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
Susan Patch Lady here – writing an online letter to Microsoft: To whom it may concern at Microsoft: I am concerned that in your zeal to make your vend[See the full post at: https://www.askwoody.com/2018/not_enough_space/]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
A 128GB or even 256GB ssd should be the minimum for any pc in 2018.
Agreed, except that I would definitely opt for more than that.
My current system has a 2TB C: volume. It’s 2/3 full, and that’s also with 2 TB D: and 2 TB V: volumes (also more than half full), not to mention 4 TB of external backup storage that’s always connected, and a separate server system that also has a few TB of space available. More than ten thousand gigabytes. Okay, it’s a geek’s system, but it illustrates the point that a few tens of GB vs. tens of THOUSANDS of GB are 3 orders of magnitude different – and I’d still love to have twice the storage I have now.
Trying to do anything remotely interesting with mere tens of GB is a bit silly. Yes, a good bit of it is Microsoft’s fault, but a fast, modern computer just wants a lot of data to work on.
-Noel
No. That was Windows 8. 🙂
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
I bought a new, low end, Chromebook-specced Windows 10 laptop a few months ago. I read the reviews that previous purchasers of the device had written before I bought the little Dell, and one of them was exactly this complaint. Like the laptop you linked, my new little Dell is an 11 inch ultraportable with 32GB internal storage.
Even knowing of this issue, I purchased it anyway, as my plan didn’t include leaving Windows on there. With Linux Mint on the little laptop, it now has more than half the space on the tiny 32GB eMMC onboard “drive” free, and that’s with a bunch of stuff installed. Waterfox, Firefox (yes, it has both for the time being), LibreOffice, Thunderbird, a few basic games, all the updates it needed…
Now, I must say that I also put in a 64GB micro SD card for /home, but none of the programs I mentioned are installed there. They’re all on the eMMC root drive.
As much as I enjoy throwing tomatoes at Microsoft, this to me is more of a case of a piece of hardware being unsuited to what was installed upon it, which I hang squarely on the OEM, not on MS for failing to tell them NO. Obviously, 32GB (the size of the internal eMMC “drive” on my laptop and yours) is too small for Windows 10, and no one forced Dell to sell a Chromebook-spec PC with Windows on it. Dell chose to do that. While I would agree that it would be a great choice if MS decided to allow a minimal installation of Windows for space-limited devices like this one, we know that doesn’t exist as yet.
I don’t necessarily think that MS should be micromanaging which systems have Windows installed on them. If they choose to as part of their OEM licensing deal, it’s their prerogative, but ultimately IMO it is up to Dell to sell usable Dell computers (and Acer, and all the others). There are a lot of ways Dell could mess up and end up with a product that doesn’t satisfy customers, and their desire to not have their name associated with such disappointment should hopefully be reason enough not to do that. Microsoft can’t possibly examine every product with Windows preinstalled and ensure that it the experience is up to their standards… there’s just too many of them. Sticking Windows on too small of a drive is just one of an endless number of errors that can make a product fail to live up to its promise.
During the Vista era, the problem wasn’t just that Vista was being sold on inappropriate hardware. It was that Intel pressured Microsoft into creating the “Vista capable” seal of approval for their 915 chipsets, which could run Vista, but could not do it very well (notably, their integrated graphics could not handle the Aero effects, a major selling point for Vista). Customers understandably confused “Vista capable” with “Vista ready,” the latter being the term for PCs that could handle Vista’s Aero effects. They bought PCs that they thought had been MS certified to run Vista well, and they were disappointed.
That wasn’t the only reason that Vista had a bad name. It also had some notable performance issues; it was noticeably slower than XP in several ways even on high-end hardware in the early days. That would be fixed in time, but for many people, it was too late– they’d already written Vista off. I was one of them! The laptop I am writing this on now came with Vista, but I replaced it with XP the day I got it. I never discovered that Vista became a competent and decent OS until only a year or two before Vista was to go EOL.
After being delayed for years, Vista still was not ready when it was released, which ought to be a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of releasing by calendar instead of releasing by the state of the product itself… but MS clearly hasn’t gotten the message.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
@ Ascaris
AFAIK, MacOS and Linux could not run properly on such cheap touchscreen 2-in-1 tablets, eg advanced touchscreen gestures, Bluetooth and webcam not working.
Compared to MacOS and Linux, Win 8.x/10 is the only desktop OS that was purposely designed by M$ to also run on such cheap touchscreen 2-in-1 tablets. If M$ had not done so, the OEM$ would not have been able to do what they did. So, at the least, M$ abetted the OEM$ in their sales “scam”.
There was no such sales “scam” with very cheap Win 7 Starter netbooks, which came with sizable HDDs, eg … https://www.cnet.com/products/asus-eee-pc-1005hab-10-1-atom-n270-windows-7-starter-1-gb-ram-250-gb-hdd-series/specs/ (US$250) …
.
http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-7-starter-2009-4/?IR=T (Microsoft’s Cheap Netbook Plan: ‘Windows 7 Starter’)
AFAIK, MacOS and Linux could not run properly on such cheap touchscreen 2-in-1 tablets, eg advanced touchscreen gestures, Bluetooth and webcam not working.
The kind of Linux I use (Linux Mint) won’t work “properly” on those devices, but to me, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Ms. Bradley referred to her device as a laptop, and as a laptop, it doesn’t need touchscreen… most people I’ve communicated with who own such devices end up never using the touchscreen at all when the device is configured as a laptop. Touchscreens on devices that are not handheld are an ergonomic nightmare, and a dedicated touchpad or mouse is far easier on the body. It’s not easy to hold your arms outstretched in front of you for hours at a time.
Still, others don’t agree with me about the futility of trying to make one device do too much, and that’s why Unity and GNOME 3 exist. They’re designed around the same “one UI to rule them all” parameters as Windows 8 and 10. How well they work is anyone’s guess; I have no desire to find out for myself, as I consider that path to be a dead end (and so does Canonical, apparently, having abandoned Unity).
As far as Bluetooth and the webcam… well, they work great on both of my Linux laptops (or the cam would, if it didn’t have tape over it, heh). Bluetooth works better and more easily in Linux on my dual boot laptop than it does in Windows. I only wish Win 8.1 did as well with Bluetooth as Linux does!
None of this changes, though, the base point I was trying to make, which is that 32GB is too small for Windows. I’d tend to agree with Noel that it’s too small in general, but I bought my 32GB laptop as an adjunct to my 9 year old but still superior in every performance-related way (except battery life) laptop, which itself is an adjunct to my desktop PC. They each have their role!
With the new laptop, I wanted something that would be a grab-and-go, use it all day kind of device that fills the role of a wifi-only iPad, roughly, and I wanted it to be cheap. My little Dell shows battery run-times of 11 hours in the tests done by one of the laptop sites, and while I’ve never pushed it to the limit, it certainly is far better than anything I’ve ever gotten on my primary laptop (which is lucky to exceed 2.5 hours).
For places where I can “set up,” like a hotel room or a friend’s house that I will be at for a while, my primary (old but good) laptop is my desktop replacement. I am not out that much in a situation where I need a ton of power, so it is still a decent fit. It’s got a 1TB SSD, a discrete 1GB graphics card, and 8GB ram, which isn’t much these days, but it’s still double what the new laptop has. With its battery life limitations, it doesn’t get the nod for any kind of extended use away from an electrical outlet.
Of course, at home, I have my desktop PC, which has 3.5 TB of onboard storage, and my backup server has another 10.5 TB. They’re a team… different players have different roles.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
I still think the problem is the entire Feature Upgrade concept altogether. They shouldn’t be releasing such big updates. If you’re going Agile, then you need to do incremental updates, even if you have to include code that isn’t currently in use.
Rather than Windows 10 being the last version of Windows, you’re just installing a new version every 6 months. That’s why the download is as big as the OS install DVD.
The problem is MS’ pointless forced upgrades.
32 GB should be more than enough to run W10, a media player and a browser.
-lehnerus2000
AFAIK, the OEMs preinstalled Win 8.1 on such cheap tablets with 16GB eMMC Flash-storage, using WIMBoot compression, …
https://www.howtogeek.com/196416/wimboot-explained-how-windows-can-now-fit-on-a-tiny-16-gb-drive/
= not easy to clean reinstall Win 8.1.
Sorry about that, yes I meant driver ecosystem. Fixed it up.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Oscar, I agree that this is a total scam with regard to everyday people. Most people have no way of knowing these issues; and they don’t have the money to be buying junk. My anger with Microsoft and the OEMs is primarily in this arena, because these folks look to Microsoft and the OEMs as the experts in this field, not the scam artists.
As for the education authorities in poor countries, anyone who is appointed to a position of responsibility in the government of any country should do their research before spending public money on something, especially in a poor country. And if you aren’t knowledgeable enough in a particular area, you consult with someone who is. For example, if I were tasked with buying cars for use by my department, I would do research into the different cars on the market, including speaking with mechanics who work on those cars, to find out what are the pros and cons of the different cars. I would also speak with people who drive a lot and who rent a lot of cars, to get their opinions.
If I weren’t an IT professional, but I was tasked with buying computers for my department or school, I would pick what I thought were good computers, and I would forward that information to IT professionals, to get their opinions about those computers. Even with doing this, you can still make mistakes, so I will give them a one-time pass if they bought this junk which is being presented to the market as “Windows 10 computers”.
In other words, I am angry at Microsoft and the OEMs here; but at least the education authorities could try to get it right; and they are in a better position to get it right than the everyday people.
Microsoft’s Minimum Hardware Requirements issued 5/2/17 purports:
“This specification defines the minimum hardware requirements necessary to:
Boot and run Windows 10.
Update and service Windows 10.
Provide a baseline user experience that is comparable with similar devices and computers.
The goal of this specification is to enable OEMs, ODMs, SoC vendors, and other component vendors to make early design decisions for devices and computers that will run Windows 10.”
Further down, for a desktop version (includes laptops), it says the minimum specs are:
32-bit: 16GB storage and 1GB RAM
64-bit: 20 GB storage and 2 GB RAM
Microsoft says, off the top, “This specification defines the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 10 and all types of devices or computers designed for this release (Windows 10, version 1703). Microsoft will build and test the Windows 10 OS against the requirements described in this specification.”
That is less than the specs for the Patch Lady’s new laptop that had trouble updating. She is not going to be alone in having difficulty. Makes one wonder what kind of testing they are doing.
If people paying $$$ for Surface products get problems and early end of life, what chance do those on budget systems have?
If I were shopping for a computer, I’d certainly check out the minimum specs, and think I was home free… If Microsoft can’t tell you what will run their OS, who can?
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
I can tell you honestly that if you have Windows 10 32-bit and if all you have is 16 GB of storage and 1 GB of RAM (or Windows 10 64-bit with 20 GB of storage and 2 GB of RAM), your computer is going to c r a w l, that is, if it will even work. If you are an expert in configuring Windows 10, you might be able to hobble along with this minimal configuration; but the average user will have no idea how to make this machine work.
At a bare minimum, you need 64 GB of storage; but the minimum reasonable amount of storage is 128 GB. As far as RAM, the minimum you should have is 2 GB (32-bit) or 4 GB (64-bit).
By saying that those small numbers are sufficient, Microsoft is being dishonest in the extreme.
Have you been able to open it and see if every bit is soldered to the motherboard? Maybe you can add more memory** and change the SSD.
I don’t know about Ms. Bradley’s laptop, but I would guess it’s the same as mine: soldered RAM, eMMC, and CPU.
My laptop is the Dell Inspiron 11-3162, and I’ve found and downloaded the Dell service manual for it. Yes, Dell actually tells you how to open the thing up and replace components, and it doesn’t void the warranty! They won’t cover damage the user does to the system unless Dell told them to open it up, but the warranty in general isn’t voided. I find that surprisingly pleasant… I don’t really know how common that is, but my cynicism would have had me believe that as soon as screwdriver hits screw, the warranty is done.
Even though I matched the Dell model number and service ID to the manual, the service manual describes socketed ram and a removable eMMC drive module, which my laptop definitely does not have. I got it for $180, so I didn’t expect it to, but it would have been a pleasant surprise if it had.
In cases like this, I have actually found eBay to be an invaluable reference resource. If you search for the laptop model number and “motherboard,” you will often see several of them for sale, sometimes with clear, high-resolution photos. Not one of the motherboards for the 11-3162 had the socketed RAM or removable eMMC storage module the Dell manual described. I verified that being the case with mine too when I opened it to replace the wifi card (Intel 3160ac -> Intel 7265ac). At least THAT was removable!
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
IMO, these laptops with small-capacity drives are a step in the direction of “thin client”-type cloud devices, where neither your programs nor your data reside on the machine itself, but on somebody else’s server.
These machines seem to be repurposed Chromebooks that simply have a full PC UEFI instead of the Chromebook version. In size, spec, and price, they’re virtually indistinguishable from Chromebooks, and Chromebooks are very much as you describe (thin-client like), Cybertooth. I’ve seen the tiny eMMC drives these devices have described as being done intentionally to promote Google’s cloud storage.
In my case, that’s what I was looking for. I actually considered Chromebooks as well as Windows laptops, since it is possible to install Linux (of the user’s choosing; ChromeOS itself is a Linux flavor) on a Chromebook.
It ends up being similar to a Chromebook in function, except one where I can use Waterfox instead. With its 64 GB micro SD, there’s plenty of room for non-video data (and I can go bigger later, of course, if I need to). As a standalone machine, 32GB internal and 64GB external would still be woefully inadequate, but in that line of thinking, the CPU would be far too slow and the RAM far too small as well. If I am going to be in a place where I have access to an electrical outlet, I would much rather use my “main” laptop. From its better performance to its 2.75mm stroke keys (compared to 1.5 on the little laptop) to its larger 16:10 display to its touchpad with real buttons, the older “main” laptop is just more pleasant to use all around, if its girth and short battery life aren’t primary factors. It just goes to show how much things have changed since the height of the Moore’s Law era. I like it better this way… I like having gear that doesn’t go obsolete almost as soon as the box is open!
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
Like they say, “Caveat Emptor” or Buyers Beware. Computer buyers should beware of M$ and the OEMs.
.
.
Eg some high-end laptops from Lenovo and Dell come with Win 10 preinstalled in fake-RAID disk mode using the proprietary Intel RST driver = cannot install Win 7/8.x or Linux. Even doing a clean reinstall of Win 10 will not be easy. …
https://triplescomputers.com/blog/uncategorized/solution-switch-windows-10-from-raidide-to-ahci-operation/ (… without the need to reinstall Win 10 in AHCI disk mode)
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/4613/t/19659260
Some OEM Win 8.x/10 computers, eg Acer, Asus and HP, have an obstructive or pro-M$ UEFI-BIOS setting for “select an UEFI file as trusted for executing”,(= Win 7/8.x and Linux cannot boot properly). For the fix, please refer to …
https://itsfoss.com/no-bootable-device-found-ubuntu/
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=236560 (Re: [SOLVED] :Installed Linux Mint 18.1Cinnamon x64 on Acer One 1-132 Black Screen Issues after Install)
Some recent(= end 2017) OEM laptops, eg the Acer E and S series, may have even removed this UEFI-BIOS setting(eg “No bootable device” after installing Linux and cannot be fixed), but may be restored by a new BIOS firmware update from the OEMs = update through Windows only. This was after many complaints from affected users. …
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=254948 (Re: Acer Es1-132 – “No bootable device” [SOLVED])
___ Another workaround is …
https://askubuntu.com/questions/862946/unable-to-install-ubuntu-on-acer-aspire-es1-533
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