I've known for years that Microsoft is in a giant conspiracy with the hardware manufacturers -- especially CPU builder Intel -- to help sell more, faster and bigger, hardware.  Without Microsoft's continued bloated builds of operating systems, it is not unimaginable that computers today could be running systems that provide the same basic functionality many times faster than they do.

Of course Microsoft isn't the only company guilty of this, as just about all operating system companies have done the same things over time, adding functionality, that may never really have been needed, to their systems in the name of competition with, well, Microsoft or Apple or other companies.  HP had to add features to HP-UX, Sun had to add features to Solaris, and the various builds of Linux have had to add features to their systems as well.

As a side effect of all of this operating system bloat we lose the ability to run the latest and greatest operating systems on older hardware and basically we keep orphaning old equipment that would still be functional *if* these companies would continue to provide support for them.  As an example, if Microsoft would continue to patch Windows 98/Me, there are older computers that could still be useful for basic tasks such as surfing the internet, running instant messenger, and simple word processing and spreadsheet type tasks.

Microsoft has long since (over a year ago now) ceased to provide support for Windows 9x/Me.  Long before that DOS was basically made dead as users determined for themselves -- with plenty of push from Microsoft and their partner hardware manufacturers -- that single task operating systems were not sufficient.  Supporting these old systems costs a lot of development time and money, and with them no longer being sold (sales of these systems stopped long before support of them did) there's no direct revenue stream to help pay for continued work on them.

Microsoft, and many of their customers, may argue that customers have demanded a lot of the new features that have showed up in their operating systems as we have progressed from Windows 9xterpfan1980 to Windows 2000, on to Windows XP, and later Vista.  Each with requirements for more RAM, more CPU power, more hard drive space, faster and more powerful graphics processors, etc

Some of the hardware improvements have been sorely needed as we have had to make some of the computing hardware better to allow for using bigger and faster data paths so we can support higher resolutions of video, DVD video playback without requiring separate decoding hardware, and other similar things.  But at the same time, the basics of computing and the basic needs for computer users haven't changed that much.

Which brings me back to the point of this article -- the relative dearth of lightweight operating systems.

Personally I really doubt that Microsoft could ever find it within themselves to make lowering hardware requirements a design goal for their software.  It just won't happen.  They don't want to restrict themselves in that regard, and even if they did, they'd face all sorts of pressures from hardware manufacturers that would see the lack of demand for their newer, faster/larger/better equipment.  And again, Microsoft doesn't want to continue working on older operating systems when they don't see a continued revenue stream from those systems.  And finally, Microsoft doesn't want to get too far into the business of competing with their selves.  If they continue to support Windows Me (and some would say to make it stable and completely usable {wink, wink}) and make it work better on older hardware as well as giving users the ability to use it on newer hardware with newer features, then there's no need to buy Windows Vista or any of the successive systems that have come since Windows Me was developed.

But, I believe that Microsoft could do better here, and would do better here, if they worked more towards a less is more approach.  If they concentrated more efforts on lightening up their operating systems, and included less required features and more optional features in their systems I think they'd continue to enjoy sales of their software via sales of these optional features, or intermediate upgrades (minor upgrades) of their operating systems.  Customers that wanted all of the bells and whistles could get them, while customers that just want computer systems to work for their needs could continue to use the same basic systems that everyone else used.

The inspiration for most of what I'm writing here comes from recent adventures playing with an older 1998/1999 time frame laptop computer.  An old Toshiba system that can run Windows 9xterpfan1980 very well, but a system that performs horribly if you try running say Windows 2000 or newer on it.  It just doesn't have the memory, the disk space, or general speed that is needed for running something newer on it.

As it turns out though, there's really no need to run something faster on it.  If Windows Me was still available (and still getting patches for the bugs Microsoft left in the operating system) it would be perfectly adequate for running on this system.  I still have a copy of Windows Me and have it installed on this system and it works fine and dandy, but then if I use the system I have to be concerned that Microsoft's operating system flaws could leave the system vulnerable to attack.  Since the last round of updates for Windows 9xterpfan1980 came out, there have only been, oh, I'd guess about 30 - 40 flaws in Microsoft's systems that have been officially acknowledged, with the vast majority of those having existed during the entire lineage of Microsoft's Windows product line.

I did explore running Puppy Linux on the system, as well as DSL (Damn Small Linux) and though both run, the effectiveness of either is a bit questionable.  Puppy Linux ran the best of those two, and actually worked fairly well, though it isn't Windows and anyone that went to use the system would be a bit confused at not being able to add icons onto the desktop easily, as well as perhaps wondering where Microsoft Office is instead of say Abi-Word.

DSL worked ok as a basic system, but failed to properly find and use the Wireless Lan card that was installed in the system, no matter that the card is noted as one that is supported and should work 'out of the box' in DSL.

I tossed Ubuntu onto the system as well, with versions varying from the now fairly old 4.0 Warty Warthog system to the latest and greatest versions (7.x).  Of that various collection, I'd say that the version 5 series of Ubuntu worked about the best, but it showed the age of the hardware in relation to the smaller (lightweight) Linux builds of DSL and Puppy, and really shows the age of the hardware when compared to Windows Me.

I'll be selling off this old, fairly trusty, laptop soon and I hope whoever buys it is happy with Windows Me and Office 2000 as they exist now, frozen in time, never seeing any more patches.  The eventual user will still find a fairly spritely system, with an adequate 800x600 resolution display, and even wireless networking that can be used just about anywhere that WEP is used.  There's still VPN client support, and still a basically functional system here (or there, once it is sold).

There's also the reminder (to me) that the concepts of efficient coding have been lost by many along the way.  Which, by the way, make it all the more impressive that companies like Stardock work so hard on keeping their products working on the widest array of hardware possible.  I remember being very suprised at the idea that GalCiv2 would play on relatively ancient hardware and remember reading Draginol's articles and discussion that noted that supporting this old hardware was something that Stardock still strived for.  Definitely impressive considering what has happened at so many other places along the way.