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It took me more than 10 hours download it last week from Technet. The ISO file has 2,497.48MB. When I saw how long the download would take it occurred to me that it might be interesting to compare the file sizes of the different Windows versions:

  • Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 (x86): 589.14MB
  • Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 Beta (x86) (all editions): 3,096.52MB
  • Windows 7 Beta (x86) (all editions): 2,497.48MB
  • Windows 3.11: 5.47MB
  • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition: 593.66MB
  • Windows Server 2003 R2, Enterprise x64 Edition: 787.94MB
  • Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard (x64): 2,542.27MB
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard Beta (x64): 2,850.01MB

The first thing you will notice is the that the ISO file for Vista SP2 is more than five times as big as the one for XP SP3. The reason for this huge difference could be that a Vista DVD contains all editions (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate). Thanks to single-instance storage, however, a WIM image doesn’t contain redundant files. I have never created an ISO file that contained only one Vista edition. If you have one on hand, please tell us the file size.

One thing is certain, though. Vista is a much bigger than XP. It is interesting to note that the current Windows 7 Beta is 500MB smaller than Vista, even though the former has quite a few new features. Note that the difference between Windows 7 and Windows Vista is equivalent to the whole size of Windows XP! This can mean only that Microsoft optimized the code. The fact that Windows 7 is much faster than Vista and XP is another hint. I guess that many think that the most important new feature of Windows 7 is that it is less “bloated” than previous versions.

But I am sure that many think that Windows 7 is still bloated compared to Windows XP. This might be true. If you compare Windows XP to Windows 3.11, however, you have to admit that XP is bloated, too. After all, XP is 100 times bigger! Yes, I know, more than nine years separate the release dates of Windows XP and 3.11, and only five years separate Vista and XP. But if you compare the factors (100 vs. 5), you have to admit that XP is really a bloated pig. Technet doesn’t offer Windows 95 for download. I would be interested in the size of its ISO image.

The file sizes of the server versions have developed comparably. What I find interesting is that Windows Server 2008 R2 is bigger than Windows Server 2008, although Windows 7 is smaller than Vista. This surprised me because Server 2008 R2 has fewer new features than Windows 7. Microsoft undoubtedly invested quite some time to optimize the Windows 7 code.

Anyway, in my opinion a bloated operating system is a good operating system. I know that such sentences evoke strong emotions among Vista haters. However, I believe that it is the nature of evolution to bloat things. Our genome is more bloated than those of bacteria, our libraries are more bloated than those in the middle age, and today’s PC operating systems are more bloated than those used in the first Mainframes. I love bloat!