Microsoft has realized there is a problem using Windows 10 on lower-end devices that ship with limited storage. That problem being, once you start downloading updates there’s not enough space available to install them without the use of an external drive.
One answer to this is getting device manufacturers to ship more storage, the other is to cut down the size of Windows 10. Option No. 2 is obviously easier, so that’s what Microsoft is doing.
As Windows Central(Opens in a new window) reports, a new version of Windows 10 is in development, referred to internally as Windows 10 Lean. It is aimed squarely at devices with an internal storage limit of just 16GB, which includes a number of tablets and those HDMI port compute sticks we saw appearing over the past few years.
Welcome to Windows 10 Lean/CloudE/S (once again?)
This new edition started shipping with this week’s Skip Ahead build (17650)
It seems to be heavily cut down, an x64 clean install is roughly 2 GB smaller than Pro
Its edition ID is 0xB7 which was missing from SDK headers pic.twitter.com/2Sn3SVXeZB(Opens in a new window)— Lucan (@tfwboredom) April 20, 2018
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The first sign of Windows 10 Lean appeared in a Redstone 5 preview build and tweeted about by Lucan(Opens in a new window). The goal appears to be a version that’s 2GB smaller than a clean install of Windows 10 Pro x64.
Microsoft aims to achieve that by cutting features rather than compatibility. So, while legacy apps will continue to work, users of Lean will lose access to Internet Explorer and the Registry Editor, for example. Think of any app or feature a user is very unlikely to want to use on such low-end devices, and it’s probably not available in the Lean build.
In order for a less feature-rich version of Windows 10 to work, Microsoft also needs to do some tweaking to the way in which Windows Update functions. That’s because updates will still be required to the operating system, but Microsoft doesn’t want Lean downloading content it can’t use because the feature it relates to isn’t available.
It’s unclear when we’ll get the option of Windows 10 Lean. My suspicion is that it will only be offered as a pre-installed OS on very low-end hardware. In fact, it may end up encouraging some manufacturers to start shipping devices with just 16GB of storage.
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