Windows 98 and all software....

[joepro83]

I'm wondering about a hypothetical. Maybe some super intelligent person here might know or has seen a stat once upon a time.

So, let's say there's a die-hard Microsoft fan. He still has a functional computer with Windows 98 2nd Ed on it. He also owns every program, every piece of software, and every game ever developed and released for Windows 98. Let's say he's installed every one of those programs onto his HDD. Let's pretend that each and every program is install-able even if they weren't originally (I realize some of them were only able to be run straight from disk).

How much space would the operating system and every single program take up as a whole on his HDD?
100 gbs? 250 gbs? More? Less?

I mean, if the operating system was all of 250 Mbs. I imagine each individual program may have averaged around, what, maybe like 20-30 Mbs? Maybe as much as 50 Mbs? I dunno.

Thoughts?

[Frogs Hair]

every piece of software, and every game ever developed and released for Windows 98. I don't think there is a way to how many programs were written for Win 98 without extensive research , not to mention the disk space they would occupy.

My first computer came with Win 98 edition 2 and had a 10 GB HDD The kind of games I used ran mostly from disk with minimal support files in the HDD.

[lysander6662]

I can't imagine it would be that much. Not close to 100GB. Games would have taken the most space, surely. If you want to see what would have been big in terms of file size, look at FPS games. Bear in mind that one of the biggest FPS PC games of the time, System Shock 2, was just over 500MB [though it's 2GB on Steam now for the install, I don't know if it was a much then]. Other very popular FPS games, like Quake III, were a lot less, at around 60-70MB. I think that it would be, more like 50GB overall or close? Still, I'm speculating.

[mastablasta]

So, let's say there's a die-hard Microsoft fan. He still has a functional computer with Windows 98 2nd Ed on it. He also owns every program, every piece of software, and every game ever developed and released for Windows 98. Let's say he's installed every one of those programs onto his HDD. Let's pretend that each and every program is install-able even if they weren't originally (I realize some of them were only able to be run straight from disk).

difficult to pretend. at the time disks were not so big. furthemore the file system was fat32, and it also has limits. at the time i too had a 10 Gb disk which was considered fairly large. so i had plenty of room and i split it. about 5 GB was used for data&games, 2 GB was the OS, and 3 Gb was Red hat Linux which for some reason could not connect to internet via US robotics 56kB modem, so slowly i stopped using it. later that PC got a Windows XP upgrade (new motherboard along with 1 Gb RAM). and it ran until about a few years ago when the original disk failed. it got a Linux upgrade on secondary disk until something else failed. now it will be probably used for spare parts.



I mean, if the operating system was all of 250 Mbs. I imagine each individual program may have averaged around, what, maybe like 20-30 Mbs? Maybe as much as 50 Mbs? I dunno.

250 mb might have been for the barebones install, but that usually grew up to arround 800 MB - 1 GB. dos games (such as ultima) were arround 20 MB, Windows 98 games usually took up a bit more space. like others said this was often split between CD and HDD. the CD held the videos, while the game itself was on HDD (and so the rip versions and nocd cracks/patches were born). but there were so many games. some were doing it like this and they took up less than 100 MB, others took up a lot more space (e.g Half-life and all those mods...). and then came the cheaper DVD drive.

it would be extremely difficult to say how much it would take to install all programs. there were so many. then you include the DOS games which also ran on win98...

[joepro83]

Certainly, I didn't think anyone would know for certain. It's hard to determine how much software was created for the operating system. But I also have a hard time imagining it extended anything beyond 100 Gbs. Maybe 150 gbs at the absolute most. I'm just in awe at the difference in storage requirements and software size and speed between now and 20 years ago. A lot of advancement in a little time.

[mastablasta]

well i used to be subscribed to a magazine in those times. my first modem (US Robotics 14.4 kbps) came with such subscription as it's price was reduced substantially for the time. the PC i had at the time had windows95 on it.

anyway each magazine came with a CD filled with shareware and freeware. many of that shareware were demo games but also some other programs. not much opensource at the time. anyway even that selected software with part missign when you uncompressed it all took over 1 GB. so that's 12 Gb for some (usually quite lame software). i would say there was more than 100 or 150 GB of programs arround.

[sp40140]

I say more. you have to consider internationally..also many businesses and enterprise using it (rest using nt) so the list of applications is huge. and small things add up.