I mean it. Mac, Linux, Windows all need to take a lesson. The OS needs to slim down and offer base services like Plug and Play HW support, accept user input and provide a simple GUI. What we don't need are fancy animations on the screen or icons that rotate.
More and more functionality is provided by hosted web applications, like Google - Microsoft - Yahoo and many others are providing online application. When the browser is open, do I care about fade in/out of my start menu? NO!!! Why then should I waste CPU and memory on this crap?
At one time Linux was able to be installed on virtually any hardware in less than 500mb. This is still possible, but not straight forward because I have to pick my desktop environment - browser - plugins - extra services. If I pick a basic workstation install of Centos or Suse, I end up with about 2gb of space used.
On a Mac, a default install throws in 2gb of printer drivers I will never use. I know they are trying to make things idiot proof - but it's my hard drive. Then there are stacks and icons that preview a document, all using resources and all of them get hidden when I open NeoOffice or Firefox.
Vista, 13-16gb for the OS. I don't think so.
Slim down, look how much functionality is on the iPhone, Blackberry and Treo without a huge OS overhead. It can be done, XP has been hacked many times to remove "non - critical" components - I've seen XP installs down to 248mb, fully functional XP that I can run games on or surf or run Office and supports plug and play.
Keep it Simple Stupid...
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