- Microsoft Windows 10 System Requirements
- Windows 10 Requirements For Pc
- Windows 7 Thin Pc System Requirements
- Windows Thin Pc System Requirements 2017
As I discovered in recent TechEd presentations in Australia and New Zealand, not too many people are familiar with the newest members of the Windows 7 family. So let’s explore one of those in more detail, called Windows Thin PC. For the full marketing overview, you can review these pages:
Nov 22, 2017 I have a how-to here on the licensing requirements for Windows in a VM from a server: License Windows 10 for use in virtualization environment. If you are to access a Windows 10 VM from a thin client, the thin client (or user) will need a Windows OS license - that license is Windows Virtual Desktop Access (VDA). The size of the Windows operating system that comes with your device and the amount of space needed to download and install Windows updates, are highly variable as they depend on a variety of factors.
To summarize, Windows Thin PC is a modified version of Windows 7 (built from a Windows Embedded Standard 7 base) that is available as a Software Assurance benefit (for anyone with Software Assurance on their desktop operating systems). It has a reduced footprint (1.1GB compressed WIM, under 5GB when expanded on disk), and as a result has lighter hardware requirements:
- 1GHz processor
- 1GB RAM
- 16GB hard disk space
So it should come as no surprise that it is designed to be used as a thin client OS, enabling older or lesser hardware to connect to your VDI or terminal services infrastructure to run most applications.
Windows Thin PC has licensing restrictions that allows very few applications to be installed and used locally. From the Thin PC FAQ:
Can I run applications on WinTPC?
Yes, you can run applications that fall into one of the following categories:
- Security
- Management
- Terminal emulation
- Remote Desktop and similar technologies
- Web browser
- Media player
- Instant messaging client
- Document viewers
- .NET Framework and Java Virtual Machine
However, you cannot run any productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office or similar applications.
Again, this is pretty consistent with what you could do with dedicated thin client hardware,
So what is it like to deploy this operating system? It deploys just like any other version (SKU) of Windows 7. MDT 2012 will officially support deploying this OS (since that where we’ve done all of our testing), but it’s not hard to get MDT 2010 Update 1 to deploy it too by removing the <UpgradeData> section from the unattend.xml that you use to deploy Windows Thin PC.
Microsoft Windows 10 System Requirements
Windows 10 Requirements For Pc
What does it look like once installed? Just like Windows 7, but with fewer items on the start menu:
Windows 7 Thin Pc System Requirements
So it’s not an operating system for everyone, but it does have its place.
Windows Thin Pc System Requirements 2017
The size of the Windows operating system that comes with your device and the amount of space needed to download and install Windows updates, are highly variable as they depend on a variety of factors. Visit here to learn why. The factors that impact the amount of free hard drive space needed to take an update include: the versions of Windows previously installed on the machine, the amount of disk space available to reuse from Windows files, such as the virtual memory pagefile or hibernation file, which applications are installed on your device and how those applications store data. Starting with the May 2019 Update, the system requirements for hard drive size for clean installs of Windows 10 as well as new PCs changed to a minimum of 32GB. The 32GB or larger drive requirement is set to leave space for users to install apps and to keep data on the device. Installing Windows or updating from a previous version of Windows on devices with less than 32GB storage will continue to work if the device has enough free space available. When updating, Windows will attempt to automatically free up enough hard drive space and guide you through freeing up even more if the automatic cleanup is not sufficient. You can also take steps to free up space on your own. For more information, see Free up space to install the latest Windows 10 update or visit the related FAQ.