http://liliputing.com/2015/03/microsoft-shrunk-the-windows-10-footprint-to-fr...Microsoft shrinks the Windows 10 footprint to free up space on cheap tablets, notebooks 
Microsoft has a bit of a problem .... Win 10 is going to be too large to fit on the remaining systems drive space that MS has already been putting on tablets and Chromekillers. This "too small for my stuff" has already become quite an issue with the 32 gb storeage space $200 HP Chromekillers that have already been sold, and they were loaded with the smaller footprint Windows 8.1 Bingware.
The harsh fact is when your operating system and your software fill the dive totally up, you tend to crash. A lot. Windows machines all shipped with 32gigabyte flash drives which were twice as big as what Chrome OS required, but are now being found to be simply too small to hold the OS and a few locally loaded large programs. (a game, fergetaboutit ...)
It has become an issue to the point Best Buy and Amazon are already getting a lot of 90 day returns on some of the HP Streambook units for the issue.
Microsoft and HP have aggravated the condition by putting lots of crapware and shovelware on the machines
which took up almost all of the free existing space and definitely put the casual user into an ongoing bind.
All the bad user reviews building up and the tech writer's angry blasts as such are making a smell, a redolence of rotting dead things .....
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE !!!!!To fix the problem, the new planned tablet/small laptop Windows 10 boot drive c:/systems/ will only be partially loaded on the machine at a given time
in a compressed data format and will be unpacked as needed then repacked for minimal storage space.
The other parts of drive c:/systems/
which are only occasionally needed will be selectively downloaded and unpacked/expanded
as needed then erased when not in use.
This trick is supposed to wind up giving you enough room on the drive to "do stuff" and by constantly cleaning and replacing the c:/systems/ stuff new all the time you are getting a measure of virus/trojan protection as well.
( and this is true, BTW )Plus, stock recovery image means exactly that, you get a new stock install that is constantly updated and correct. This is like a ChromeOS Powerwash except in Chrome you only do a powerwash when you think it is needed, the MS version happens endlessly all the time.
"Recovery
The other major change in Windows 10 is that Microsoft is making it unnecessary for PC makers to include a full recovery image in local storage. This can free up between 4GB and 12GB of storage.
Instead, if you need to reset your computer to factory settings, Windows 10 will use its own runtime system files.
As an added bonus, this means that after restoring the computer you’ll have the latest version of Windows and won’t have to download every single Windows update that rolled out since Windows was first installed on your computer."OK, this may not be a "feature" you would want for several reasons.1) You are downloading and unpacking and repacking your OS all the time, constantly, over the internet. The chance of some nasty trickster managing to get a packet of his trash into your OS system to be expanded and installed automatically is now a clear and present danger as the back & forth flow happens each and every hour of real use. Or simple misreads or miswrites can happen (they do, you know).
2) The little puny Atom processor can't do all this activity without a speed penalty (and since it is constantly happening you will notice the slowdowns). And what happens if you have slower low end internet service, the issue could get compounded mightily.
3) Your little solid state drive has a finite number of reads and writes as its life-span, plus solid state drives do suffer from a form of fragmentation delay (which although much better than a spinning platter drive it is still very real)
4) Come the day the free trial is over and you are late paying your Microsoft Tax, your other half of your c:/system/ drive and all of your real data at the MS data center is suddenly unavailable to you. Instant brick. Pay a hefty fee for "re-initialization", please, plus your next year's MS tax in advance.
Microsoft and Google are both going to give you a period of time of full free use when you buy your machine, then both are going to charge you something somehow for taking care of it past that point. The time spans and costs will be quite different between the two, as will come out later, like a year or so after you have bought into the "free Win 10" system.
A Chromebox always has enough drive to hold the entire OS system and any data you may need, and your "programs" are most all web based anyway --- plus you get the network drive C: for the first year or so jest so you can get all addicted to using it.
People haven't had to pay anything much for Google Drive space yet so far (they got a lot of free years with the unit purchase) and they are certainly free to go use other services such as Dropbox, etc. Google never locks down your data, you can go get your stuff off your Google Drive at any time, just not add anything to it if your Drive space isn't current or is full up.
Your files on a Chromebook are real and you could store them locally on a terabyte USB drive just by copying them over.
There was some discussion about Win10 only storing a bookmark to your data locally on your machine, and
keeping all your data on line at a MS data center and downloading it back to you as needed. This idea was due to "limited drive space" of course.
sure, right .....We hope that BAD idea has thoroughly been killed by the tester guys horrified feedback ......
MS is trying hard to make all this stuff work out, but I fear some of the things they have already done (and some of the other things yet to come) are not going to be very popular with their user base.
They are trying to put 10 pounds of local OS and data into a two pound sack and doing all sorts of strange gyrations to "make it work".
It sure don't sound like Win 10 is getting faster and lighter, now does it?
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