My god.Who actually worries about 1 measly GB nowadays? I mean shit, large hard drives are not very expensive. Look at this, I have like 169.4 GB total on this computer. If I give an OS 1.4 GB of space I don't care because I still have like 168 GB for everything else.
Do you know why large drives are getting so cheap nowadays? It is because Microsoft has a mainstream OS that is always being updated. New versions of the OS have higher hardware requirements. Naturally hardware manufacturers make new, faster and better hardware to compensate for OS needs. When manufacturers pump out new stuff the prices in the old stuff drop, drop and drop. Just because the old hardware is not the latest and greatest doesn't mean that it still is not good. example. Western Digital rolls out a new 160GB, 180GB, 200GB and 250GB. The 160GB is priced around the same price that the 140GB was selling for and the 140GB ones' price gets slashed down quite a bit. The old 80GB model is still on the shelves and in production and of course it's price keeps falling too. Now consumers can buy an 80GB hard drive for around $90-$100 in local stores...$70-$80 online. Realistically, that old 80GB 7,200 RPM/ATA133/8MB cache model is more than enough to adhere to most peoples' needs. That 80GB hard drive used to go for what the 200GB+ drives go for now, but are $170+ cheaper because of the latest and greatest taking its' place.
If it wasn't for mainstream software and OSes forcing new, faster stuff to be released we would still be using old, slow stuff.
If Linux and open source were the top dog in x86 we would still be paying $1000+ for freaking Pentium 233MMX w/3GB hard drive computers. Cheers to MS for forcing technology to be evolved. ;P
Some people just need to upgrade thier shit if thier system can't stand up to modern software. BTW, a Linux install can take up to 2.5GB+. Redhat Linux.....5 freaking CD's.....3 CD's of the 5 disc set are required to install the OS.