Microsoft To Offer Windows 7 On USB Thumb Drives? 259
Posted
by
timothy
from the please-send-me-your-repurposable-drives dept.
from the please-send-me-your-repurposable-drives dept.
Barence writes "Microsoft is reportedly considering offering Windows 7 on USB thumb drives to allow netbook owners to upgrade their machines. Windows has, until now, only been distributed on DVDs or via download. However, netbooks don't have optical drives and the Windows 7 ISO weighs in at 2.3GB, which would take several hours to download on an average broadband connection and potentially do serious damage to a customer's broadband data cap."
Re:Not so average (Score:5, Interesting)
You may not be aware that "average" in New York City, and "average" in Backwoods Nowhere are entirely two different animals. It takes me DAYS to download a 4 GB ISO. Seriously, I wouldn't bullshit you. I use Firestarter firewall, and set it to shape traffice, giving priority to interactive (browsing) traffic, so I'm only using about 85 to 90 % of my bandwidth for a download. On "average" it takes between 4 1/2 and 6 days to download a movie.
Now that you realize that not everyone has the bandwidth that you enjoy, you might do a little research, and find out what percentage of the US population enjoys "fast" internet. Or not. No research is required to stick your foot in your mouth again. ;)
Linux on USB Flash Drives (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related note, several years back, I emailed Ubuntu with a product suggestion. I asked them for "Ubuntu on USB Flash Drives", installable via a simple Windows executable. Double click the executable, choose your USB flash drive, and it would install on the USB flash drive and just work.
My thought was that it would make it much easier for Windows users that are curious about Linux to try it out. No need to burn a disc first (burning discs can be complicated for non-technical users), no need to boot from the optical drive to get into the Ubuntu installer, etc.
And since USB flash drives are read/write, you could even let them update packages, save documents, etc. A much better, more realistic experience than a read-only test drive of Ubuntu on CD.
They very kindly replied thanking me for the suggestion, but alas, it never materialized...
Re:ROM drives possible? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, they just need to put a different type of chip in the thumbdrive, no biggie. The problem is that flash memory might be a lot cheaper due the massive amount of factories already tooled to produce it. Maybe they could include a physical write protect switch like you see on floppies, or something.
Re:Somebody is thinking at Microsoft? (Score:1, Interesting)
Can you imagine the ire of not only having to download a 3.5GB OS onto a netbook
I'm more excited about the ability to modify the installation (slipstream servicepacks/drivers/hotfixes) without having to kill a dvd every time.
OTOH, it does increase the possibility of someone injecting a trojan on the USB en-route. *adds another layer of tinfoil to hat*
Smart idea, but an even better idea (Score:1, Interesting)
Is to also have a Live mode that won't even require to be installed on the hosts machine.
2 sticks in one, one containing the main system files, read-only, the other being your user space.
It's not like it would be hard to pull off, and the cost won't be that much more if you keep the sizes low. (and you can always offer larger ones too)
Having a Win7 Live would be useful if you screwed up your machine and need to do some repairs and/or backups if the repair attempts fail.
I have a WinXP live just in case i screw things up, as well as UBCD, several diagnostic tools and so on. All in one beautiful disc. :)
Starting off at 1gig and going up.
Could be used to carry your most important files around, or all if you end up getting one of the larger ones and don't use a lot.
Just out of interest, are there any companies out there who make things like this? One part read only (with switch?) and another read/write? Such a thing would be incredibly useful.
What concerns me the most about this article... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't the news of Microsofts ideas. It's that the article already makes the assumption that you have bandwidth caps and Microsoft is having to work around them. On Microsoft's front, this is great. However, this just reeks of society accepting that bandwidth caps are here, acceptable, and we should just succumb to our limitations.
If the article had instead mentioned the "new unacceptable limitations being imposed by broadband ISPs" I would see it differently. Instead it states "...which would take several hours to download on an average broadband connection and potentially do serious damage to a customer's broadband data cap.".
To me, the article writer is already stating that bandwidth caps are here to stay, we lost the war on bandwidth caps, and we should rejoice that Microsoft has plans to overcome these obstacles.
This is always how major obstacles are overcome when the public cries.
1. Proudly display your new 'grand plan' and how it's 'needed' or 'helpful'.
2. Public outcry comes and you dash for cover to avoid being attacked.
3. Bring the program back a little at a time and convince the press (or buy them) into stating your plan as if it is already here and in use.
4. Bring your 'grand plan' to market. The public is sick of hearing about the negatives of the 'grand plan' and have decided that it WILL happen, there's nothing they can do about it, and should just accept that it is here to stay.
This happens with MANY things in life...Obama's 'grand' plan for health care, Bush's bailout plans, ISP bandwidth caps... I could make a very long list of things that you can read about that are worded as if they are here already.
I admit, the article is written with a .uk domain, so maybe the UK already has imposed limits. But I've seen wording here in the USA making statements implying everyone in the USA has bandwidth caps and we should all run and check them regularly.
Re:Idiots. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Whoa! (Score:1, Interesting)
According to economic theory, financial crises don't happen, clearly standard economics is wrong.
According to Newtonian mechanics, an object in motion will never stop, clearly Newtonian mechanics is wrong.
According to Darwinism, apes evolved into humans, but there are still apes, so clearly Darwinism is wrong.
Or, more precisely: "If you attack an uneducated caricature of what a discipline actually says, you merely reveal your ignorance."
10 GB last time I checked (2 days ago) (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows 7 64bit install is 10 GB, even with significant amount of features turned off (and compressed,removed).
Also, when comparing Linux to anything else, install a full feature development environment to that OS along with Documentation which will also include debug libraries etc. For example Visual Studio and XCode on OS X. That is the real size for you to compare while there are many other effects like Windows help files (CHM) are really,really compressed to a point to choke low Mhz systems.
Another thing is, the amazing waste of space MS does by basically copying entire thing to local HD while installing. I wondered if they were that stupid and now we see the real deal, it was all for these kinds of feature plans. You know, user will likely delete the USB key contents somehow or they will get corrupted etc.