Is Windows 7 really a memory hog?

I'm no Windows fan. But, I use Windows 7 every day and I've deployed it on several dozen PCs and I've never seen Windows 7 misuse memory like Devil Mountain Software's claims that it does.

While it's doubtlessly true that, as Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's CTO, is reported to have claimed, that "Everyone thinks that they're a [Windows] performance expert," and that "They look at their PC and say, 'My PC doesn't do that.'"

Well, while I can't claim to be a Windows performance expert, I can justifiably claim to be an operating system expert, and that I've recently done a lot of detailed analysis and work with Windows 7. I've never seen Windows 7, in and of itself, on the approximately sixty systems I've either used it on or installed it on exhaust its memory resources to the point where I saw any performance problems.

I have seen Vista pull that trick off. I've also seen Windows 7 systems get overloaded by memory-intensive programs like Autodesk and Photoshop, and on one occasion, Firefox 3.5x, slowing a system down because those versions of Firefox were memory hogs. But, Windows 7 has a done a fine job of managing memory in my experience.

Now, that's not to say that Windows 7 doesn't require a lot of memory real estate. It does. I recommend a minimum of 2GBs of RAM for 32-bit Windows 7 and 4GBs for 64-bit Windows 7. For choice, I like to give either version at least 6GBs.

That's a lot. One of the reasons why I prefer Linux is that I can comfortably any modern desktop Linux on a PC with only a gigabyte of RAM. Indeed, many will run just fine on 512MBs of RAM.

But, much as I can find reasons to dislike Windows 7 for its lack of any real security improvements over the rest of the Windows family; the fact that its best networking features only work if you move to both Windows 7 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2008 R2; and that Windows 7 Starter Edition is more of a sales gimmick than an operating system, its memory management hasn't been a problem for me.

I just haven't seen, as the company claims, that 86% of Windows 7 computers use 90-95% of available RAM. In my experience, under typical work loads, Windows 7 will make use of between a third and a half of normal memory.

Yes, if you try to run say Adobe InDesign CS4, a popular high-end desktop publishing program, or Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 speech recognition software on a Windows 7 64-bit system with only two gigabytes of RAM, you're likely to run into memory problems. But, so what? Regardless of your operating system, those kinds of applications will demand every bit of memory they can find and more.

No, while it's easy for me to find fault with Windows, I can't jump on this particular band-wagon. Sorry Devil Mountain Software, I just don't see it.