One of the most common knocks against Windows Vista is that it's "bloated," which is one explanation for its reputedly slow performance. (In reality, most tests peg it as only a few percentage points slower than Vista, which one might be inclined to forgive given its beefier security. But we digress.)

And, needless to say, much of the focus on Windows 7 has been on its speed (though, again, early tests show only slight improvements over Vista). Perhaps that helps explain this post headline over at 4sysops: Is Windows 7 less bloated than Vista?

It's a fair question, but not necessarily a fair headline: It depends on how you define "bloat." In the context of the post, it refers to the size of the operating system's ISO file: about 2.5GB for the Windows 7 beta, versus 3.1GB for Vista SP2. The takeaway would seem to be, Windows 7 is smaller, and therefore "less bloated."

What is bloat? What constitutes bloat? Right off the bat, we can think of an easy explanation for Windows 7's smaller ISO size: The OS ships without Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, and other apps that come bundled with Vista. Granted, they don't account for the full 600MB differential, but you get the idea.

Our problem with the post's headline is that it implies that the Vista OS proper is slow and sluggish compared with Windows 7--that it's "bloated"--when in fact it may just have more stuff in it. Let's wait until we get some real-world performance numbers from the shipping version of Windows 7 (and see its final size), and let's choose our words a little more carefully.