Why No Folder Size In Windows 7

Yes, this is an old issue but I wanted to summarize a few points, and open it for further discussion:

(1) Optionally displaying size of all folders has been a top-requested feature for years

(2) Windows 7 Explorer does not have this, although hovering the mouse pointer over the folder will show individual folder size.

(3) The Mac Finder displays folder size, although it's not enabled by default.

(4) In XP, Windows add-on tools like FolderSize and TreeSize Pro would add a column to Windows Explorer showing folder size. Unfortunately the underlying API IColumnProvider was removed starting with Vista, so these tools don't work in either Vista or Windows 7.

There are various arguments why Explorer can't display folder size, such as it would burden a network drive, it would be too slow, wouldn't handle junctions correctly, etc.

These arguments break down because it has already been done: the feature has already been implemented on both Mac and Windows 3rd party tools. We can see ourselves how well or poorly it works. In general it works pretty well on local drives on contemporary hardware.

Re network drives, it's easy to programmatically discriminate between network and local drives. One solution is only enable folder sizes for local drives. As on the Mac, another solution is don't enable it by default. Many users won't turn it on, so this lessens the impact.

There are more sophisticated future solutions possible to optimize folder size query of a network server. E.g, the server maintains folder size info and reports it to the client, but these aren't needed as a 1st step. The lack of these don't preclude folder size working on local drives today. Proof of this is Mac and 3rd party XP tools work fine on local drives right now.

With this in mind and considering Microsoft spent 6 billion dollars on Vista and several billion more on Windows 7, why wasn't folder size a basic feature of the Windows 7 explorer?