Windows Growing, Will Eventually Require a Googol of RAM

Low End Mac Reader Specials

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, Apple Displays, MacBooks, iMac's, MacBook Pros, Laptop and iPod accessories and more. Apple A/C Adapters for laptops starting at $25.00 Call 1-800-941-7654 or Click Here.

OWC: NewerTech NuPower Batteries for iBook and PowerBooks Designed+Built in USA to run longer, LAST LONGER TOO! Free Battery Recycling Return Label; Quality High-Capacity from $99.95

Mac users can finally play Party Poker for Mac. Not only that, they can also learn how to play PokerStars for Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, laptops, and LCD TVs side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for a new cell phone GPS products or MP3 players. The Ciao network makes searching products easy for you.

MacBook/MacBook Pro / MacMini / iMac Intel Core2 DUO DDR2 667Mhz 4GB Kit $84, 3GB Kit $60, 2GB Kit $40 1GB $20. Click to Maximize your Macs...

- 2006.05.30

According to Windows System Reqs. 1990-2006: More For Less, Windows requirements have been growing for some time.

Here's an interesting analysis you can do to talk about modeling in a science class or discuss with your geekish friends. People have been extrapolating Moore's Law forever and a day, but this article provides some less abstract information than the usual size-of-a-transistor data cited in the Wikipedia article.

The Yahoo article gives us RAM requirements on the various versions of Windows since Windows 3.1. Using this data, I have created a mathematical model of the amount of RAM needed by Windows. This enables me to make entirely unreasonable (but entertaining) extrapolations about the amount of RAM needed for future versions of Windows I like to call

The Lite Side Extrapolates Windows RAM Requirements

Some Other Snappy Title I'll Come Up With Later

Using Fathom (a statistics program used for modeling), I plugged in the values from the Yahoo article and generated the following graph and least-squares line:

Windows RAM Consumption Chart

You'll note the growth is exponential, since I had to take the log of the amount of RAM to make it a linear function.

Okay, so now we can plug in some numbers and determine the following interesting predictions:

If current trends continue:

by 2018 Windows will require 100 gigs of RAM. This is one byte of RAM for every star in the Milky Way Galaxy.
by 2022 Windows will require 500 gigabytes of RAM. (A child born today will be 16 years old.)
by 2024 Windows will require a terabyte of RAM.
by 2040 Windows will require a petabyte of RAM.
by 2052 one copy of Windows will require more RAM than the entire Internet in 2003
by 2107 one copy of Windows will have enough RAM to store a byte for each molecule in a mole (Avogadro's number)
by 2527 Windows will require a googol of RAM
by the year 10,000 Windows will require 101403 K of RAM - far larger than the number of known molecules in the universe.

Some other interesting extrapolations:

The model predicts that Windows in 1985 would have required about 100 KB of RAM. That is when Windows 1.0 was released, but its system requirements are not in the article.

Using the same model, if Windows had existed in 1980 it would have required about 13 KB RAM.

And if Windows had existed in 1960 it would have used just 4 bytes of RAM - just enough to display the Blue Screen of Death on a 7-segment display!

I am sure similar numbers would work for the Mac OS, but these were all laid out nice and simple for me. Enjoy.

Recent Lite Sides

What if Apple thought like a PC company?, 11.01. Apple has innovated and blazed its own trail. But what if it had followed the path taken by the PC copycats?
How Microsoft can turn Vista lemons into lemonade, 10.22. How Microsoft could profit by no longer allowing manufacturers to sell new PCs with Windows XP installed.
iPods that never passed beta or focus groups, 09.13. "What most Apple fans don't realize is that there were a few iPod variants that never made it out of beta testing and the focus group stage."
More in the The Lite Side index.

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Mac Pro overclocking, Windependence with Darwine, Blu-ray for Macs, and more, Mac News Review, 07.04. Also more on running Leopard on non-Apple hardware, Ubuntu on a Mac mini, the first autofocus webcam with Zeiss optics for Macs, and more.
Wouldn't life be great with an iSlate?, John Hatchett, Recycled Computing, 07.04. PDAs and smartphones are too small for some tasks, full-fledged Tablet PCs are overkill, and ebook readers are too limited. Apple has the tech to own this niche.
Mac of the Day: Original iMac G3/233, Aug. 98 - The Bondi blue wonder that bounced Apple back to profitability and into the public eye.
List of the Day: Mac Pro List is for those using a Mac Pro.
July 5 in LEM history: 98: The iMac: First of a family? - iMac Perfect for schools - 00: Apple is not your friend - 01: 75 Mac Advantages - Do you trust me? - 02: The joy of X with Classic - The good, the bad, and the intrusive - 05: No Quartz Extreme for Pismo - A brief history of NeXT - 06: Education iMac - iTunes and the French interoperability law - TopXNotes - Apple's secret battery reset utility - Misleading hard drive capacity
The Macintosh Portable started a notebook revolution, Carl Nygren, Classic Macs in the Intel Age, 07.03. Before Apple introduced the Mac Portable, notebook computers were text-based and ran MS-DOS. Ever since, graphical interfaces have been the norm for laptops.
More links in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2008 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, PowerBook, MacBook, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.