Windows 8 to be more memory efficient than Windows 7

Another week and there’s more news on Windows 8 being put up on Microsoft’s Building Windows 8 blog. This latest bit of information says that Windows 8 will use less memory than Windows 7. A screenshot shows Windows 8 being set to consume just 281 MB as compared to Windows 7’s 404 MB in similar conditions - that’s more than a 40 percent drop in memory consumption on an idle mode. The demonstration system was running both operating systems with just 1GB of memory. These are still early days, so it’s hard to say exactly how efficient Windows 8 may be, and under what conditions. Performance will also vary based on what kind of system you use and what drivers might be loaded on it. 

More than just a new face

Microsoft has tried to cut down redundant information stored in the memory. Another change being made is to the way services are initialized when Windows boots. Services will be started when needed, left on an idle mode for a while after the task is completed and then terminate. Some non-critical services will not be loaded during startup. While using the Metro interface, only essential components of the OS will be loaded. There will also be better prioritization of resources for applications, which means less important programs will not idle in the memory for too long.

To read more about Windows 8's features, check out our preview of Windows 8's Developer build.