Posted by matthewkol in Microsoft News, Windows 8 News on October 9th, 2011 | no responses Tweet When Windows 7 was released, Microsoft had set out to erase the bad rap Windows had gotten because of Windows Vista, which was notorious for being a memory hog. And now, with Windows 8, Microsoft is aiming to do the same thing – on devices with even lower system specs than Windows 7 required, especially because of the rise of tablet devices and SoC based devices that are distinguished by low power consumption. Using up RAM (random access memory) also saps power from the device. Therefore, if an operating system uses a lot of memory, then more physical RAM will have to be built into a device, and bam! – less battery life.
Windows 7 Memory Consumption
Windows 8 Memory Consumption
The above graphs perfectly illustrate the new improvements in Windows 8, which include:
Memory Combination: When a program is called, it may allocate memory for future use – but if the user never invokes the function that requires that memory, then it pretty much goes to waste. If multiple applications are doing this, then there will be redundant copies of memory around the system, which is not good for memory efficiency. So what Windows 8 will do is scout for redundant copies, free them up, and keep a single copy. This process can save tens to hundreds of megabytes of memory.
Service Changes and Reductions: Windows has always had a lot of services running in the background that no one has ever really cared for – and so Microsoft has removed some of those, moved some to “manual start” and another group to “start on demand,” which a triggered by some action in the OS, say, perhaps, device arrival, and they execute these steps.
1.) Start.
2.) Do whatever it needs to do.
3.) Hang around, make sure its existence is completely useless before
4.) Going away.
Lazy initiation of the “desktop”: We all know that Microsoft is intending to bake the familiar appearance of the Windows “desktop” into Windows 8 via system application. So the OS components that you’ll find unique to the desktop application will not be initiated at startup because some people will stay completely inside the Metro UI, which saves memory.
Giving priorities efficiently: Let’s say you’re in Windows 7, opening Excel while you have a bunch of different apps open as well. Let’s also say that you also have antivirus software that checks the files you’re opening for your safety. Well, the specific memory that the antivirus software is allocating to check that one file will probably never be used again. If Windows 7 is low on memory, it may delete memory that helps Excel – even though the antivirus software is finished and doesn’t still need the memory. Windows 8 solves this issue by allowing any program to allocate memory as “low priority,” so you won’t lose important work even if the system is low on memory.
Related posts: The Future of Windows: Metro UIMicrosoft starting major improvements for Windows 8 soonDetails: Windows 8 Build 7989Microsoft begins shipping Windows 8 Build 7971 via ConnectMystery Quad-core Windows 8 Tablet??
Real estate comparison between Windows 7 Explorer and Windows 8 Explorer