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Microsoft To Offer Windows 7 On USB Thumb Drives?
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."
It's amazing what kind of viruses you find on USB sticks these days!
And Microsoft chases OLPC once again.
My work here is dung.
I wonder if there any pirated USB sniffing dogs?
I think this is a very good idea.
Reusable FTW!
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
The next step is to convince AOL to start sending out their software on thumb drives. Then we all win!
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
The summary states "Windows has, until now, only been distributed on DVDs or via download" Calling BS , raise your hand if you remember windows on CD's, 3.5, or floppy... Windows has been distributed ion many methods.
At least you could wipe the thing and get a thumb drive out of it.
Maybe MSFT can copy Linux and make it a live distro so people can try it out before full install... wait, that'll never make them bite. Nevermind.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
BartPE?
If it's taking someone (in the US) "several hours" to download 2+ GB with their "average broadband connection", then they don't have an "average broadband connection". There is some debate about what the average broadband speed actually is in the US, but even the low end is 1.9mbps (that was from an Ars Technica back in 2007 - surely it's faster by now). Let's take the midrange, again from back in 2007, of 4.8mbps. That makes a 2.3GB download take little more than one hour. Even if congestion slows ones speed by half, that only about 2.5 hours.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
It is possible to have this on ROM drive? Has anything like that been tried?
Linux can boot from everything and doesn't have arcane configuration or environment requirements for doing so. It can run from RAM and read-only devices without cutting back functionality. The Windows boot process is full of dependencies, convoluted and badly documented.
Who hired them and how long do you think they will last at Microsoft? hohoho
Ok, being serious. It makes sense. With Time Warner slapping draconian download caps on those poor people in Texas, a USB flash drive for OS distribution in a growing netbook market shows some...slight...thinking ahead of the curve. Can you imagine the ire of not only having to download a 3.5GB OS onto a netbook but if you actually run over your cap and get charged EXTRA for it? Oh man. I would shoot my netbook.
Kudos to whomever pulled this rabbit out of the hat.
...not broadband.
Even if it was a full DVD-R (about 4.7G), we'd be talking an hour or two with typical broadband.
And if your prohibits you from 5G of download in a day, then I hope you don't pay too much for it. That's a piddly amount of download. I probably blow through about that much per day on an average day, with perhaps triple that on a day when I'm actually interested in something.
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...
When people have been doing this with Windows AND Linux for a few years now. The very interesting thing I see about this is perhaps they could have their update client update the thumb drive so if you ever have to reinstall (I mean it IS windows) you wouldn't have to go through the painful 10 billion hours of updates? Especially on these netbooks with painfully slow performance specs. I recall it taking close to 8 hours to install XP on an Acer Aspire One with a super slow SSD.
what is this "backwoods" that you speak of?
what subway line do i need to take to get there?
is there any parkland, you know, trees, which i have heard fables of, in this "backwoods" place?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think all software should be on those. If you scratch a USB drive, it still works. I don't think they have as good of a shelf life but it's not like you'd do a whole ton of I/O on it to kill it quickly. How often do you reinstall windows? Some really expensive software like robo-sewer control programs for robotic sewing machines installs off a USB drive and also requires that the USB drive be plugged in to start up the software. Talk about hard to pirate! You can't just image the drive either. It senses the serial number of the drive or something. Just think if games did this. They could be totally open with no stupid DRM malware or internet connection required. Just the USB drive needs to be plugged in and you're good. Plus, why stop there? I reeeeeally think Microsoft (and everyone else) should go back to cartridges for video games instead of CD/DVD games. Then there's basically no size limit, developers just add in a 16GB memory chip instead of 8 if they have a big game. That worked for the sega genesis and N64. Plus you can't scratch your cartridge and then have to pay another $60, and they could make the cartridge easily self destructable if anyone opens it to avoid ROMing. Just make the inside a vacuum and put an air sensor that will release a quick charging capacitor burst that fries all the memory chips if it senses air. That and put two layers of barely separated copper foil around the inside of the plastic casing and if anyone tries to penetrate it, they touch and complete a circuit that fries the memory. Flash based memory or basically anything non-optical needs to be implemented for a lot more future technology so I'm all for windows going to it at least!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
One thing I noticed is that my hard drive light it pulsing every few seconds. I wonder whether that is a background indexing service doing its thing?
No, thats insert polling on your SATA ports, presumably because you have a SATA device that supports removable media (CDRom, DVDRom, ...)
Thats not a Hard Drive light, thats an I/O light. Nerds are supposed to know what that light is.
"His name was James Damore."
Why what do you get off a Linux stick besides Wordpad and Notepad?
I mean, save us the trouble!
Whoever installs Windows 7 on a goddamn computer is a dumb, dumb motherfucker.
There, I fixed it for you.
Microsoft is considering offering Windows 7?
It seems to me that a usb ROM would make a ton of sense for things like this. If not USB than SD cards - as these are becoming fairly ubiquitous pretty quickly.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Maybe MSFT can copy Linux and make it a live distro so people can try it out before full install... wait, that'll never make them bite. Nevermind.
It may not be a "live distro," but Win 7 has already captured about half the desktop share of Linux. Operating System Market Share
Net Applications is mass-market oriented. If your gadget can access the web, Net Applications will track it.
W3Schools is developer-oriented. But even there Win 7 has 1/4 the share of Linux. OS Platform Statistics
It took Linux six damn years to move from 2% to 4% in the W3Schools stats.
Win 7 gets a 1% share in five months.
I have a 100/100 fiber in to my livingroom for 15$/month. Don't pay for slow and capped connections. Demand what you want
I assumed the summary meant WIRELESS Broadband data plans? The mention of "broadband data cap", I thought, indicated this. Netbooks, after all, are intended to be portable, on the go machines; many of which bundle data plans for subsidizing costs on the computer itself.
I want that =(, who is your provider?
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Where can I get this service in South Africa? We pay more than that for 384kbps DSL with a 3GB cap.
I am surprised that they have not tried something like this sooner seeing as it really paves the way to a hardware based copyright protection system. How hard would it be to place some kind of Microcontroller on or add firmware to a smart USB controller which records information about the system that it is being installed to and prevents the number of installs before it refuses to allow access to the stored data. It would also be make it much easier to embed the product key into the product itself. If this system information and product key information where unaddressable over the USB bus, it could make a hardware based copyright system that is non-trivial to overcome.
DRM anyone? "W7 have not been able to detect a valid dongel" Please plug it in or call Microsoft.
Downloading Windows 7 for free, burning to a DVD and installing was a surreal enough experience already!
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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.
There is an easy solution to this problem: if you don't have a decent connection at home, download the ISO at work. Check with your company's firewall nazi (that's one of the hats I wear during the day). See if he/she objects to you downloading that ISO or if company policy prohibits this type of download. If you ask nicely, the firewall nazi will probably find a way to download that ISO image rather quickly and you won't have to worry about burning up your bandwidth cap at home or waiting five days for the download at home to finish. If you mention something like, "Hey, I heard you like Five Guys. Can I buy you a burger and fries sometime?" as you hand the USB drive to the fw nazi, he/she will be much more receptive to your request. It's all in how you ask. Am I going to download a copy of the latest Star Trek movie for you (even if some free F.G. is on the line)? *No.* Would I download an ISO from Microsoft for you if you ask in a pleasant tone? Probably. Also, the chances are good that I have already downloaded that ISO for my own testing or someone who sits near me at work has a copy of that ISO.
That's great for you; the majority of us can't get that sort of speed, and certainly for not that sort of money. The maximum reasonable broadband speed where I live (semi-rural UK) is 8/1. There are companies which do offer fibre to some places now, but you're looking at £50/mo for 50/50, with 'Fair Use'.
I have a 100/100 fiber in to my livingroom for 15$/month. Don't pay for slow and capped connections. Demand what you want
From whom in the United States? And how do you connect when outside your home?
If you are going to upgrade, get the good stuff
Utterly painless dual boot on my 900HA. wireless was the only thing I needed to tweek.
They would offer Windows 7 in a convenient suppository.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
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.
Hey, I leech my employer's OC48 and the cost to me is $0/month. Great for me, but it doesn't mean I can just tell everyone to do the same. Most geeks have less trouble getting sex than a satisfactory internet hook-up.
It's faster than XP. What's not to like about it?
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.
I installed the Win7 Beta on a netbook as a test. It works surprising well (Vista did not, XP or Linux far better than Win7), except the video is screwed up for high end graphics applications like those silly new games that require the graphics capacity of a combined Pixar and Dreamworks production. One more more thing: Use mofo or some other less offensive term. The rest of us are able to maintain etiquette even when anonymously corresponding on line.
You forgot to say "among windows users". Moving from 1 windows version to another is not equivalent to moving from windows to linux. So what was your point again ?
Realistically, who isn't going to delete the W7 files off the USB drive when they're done so they can use it for other things? Should you ever need to reinstall, you'll have to buy another one. A clever win/win for Microsoft.
Yeah, people doesn't learn from their mistakes. I give two years until Win7 is crippling with crap.
There, I fixed it for you.
I'm paying $29 for 1.5Mb. I think that's more typical in the US, if broadband is available.
I think you should try Mandriva Flash. BTW, all Mandriva ISOs can run directly from a USB stick.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's faster than XP. What's not to like about it?
Oh, I don't know, maybe the whole thing about being, you know, Windows? Complete with viruses, DRM, spyware, MS deciding my rights, product activation, having to call MS if I upgrade my mobo and other substantial parts at once, oh and the whole paying money for it thingy.
Are you seriously telling someone who wrote an intentionally offensive post to not swear because you find the specific word offensive? You're aware that the post would still be inflammatory even without the particular word to which you object, right? So isn't intentionally misspelling that word akin to putting lipstick on a pig? I guess you're welcome to try to make communities you participate in less offensive by whatever standards you personally hold -- I think whining about swearing a bad idea, and find the whining much more disruptive than the original use of "motherfucker" -- but you should at least pick battles where the outcome has a pragmatic effect.
Well whoop-de-doo for you! Aren't you special. Most of us (even in my metro area of 850,000) have nowhere near options like that.
Most of us would pay for a capped (or slow) connection because it's better than nothing at all. Not all of us are as privileged as you.
Personally I pay $50 for 5/1 (thankfully uncapped), because that's the best option I have available. I remember living in a rural area where my only option was 28.8 (on a good day) dailup. That was only about 6-8 years ago, too. Try expressing a little gratitude for what you've been given by the world, and try not to have such an overblown sense of entitlement.
Porquoi?
The codeword is 'captured.'
I have a $120,000 house that is over 100 years old and on 5 acres of land, including a mini-orchard. I paid less for my home probably in part because I live in an area where I can't get 100/100 for $15/month.
All I have is DSL although a local provider sells a directional RF beam connection for about $30 a month.
I'm pretty happy with what I've got going here.
Actually, nerds don't keep up much at all on PC tech. That's what the dinks in the Hardware Section of Frys are for.
Do you know how to wire in a 74182 Look-Ahead Carry Generator chip to a 74181 ALU chip? What would be the main advantage to going to the 74LS182 part?
What would be a suitable size of inductor for a small switchmode power supply, say one using a Maxim chip, that you'll be using to power a 12-bit PIC processor, a solid state relay, and four LEDs?
Good for you. As the other posters have mentioned, this isn't available to everybody. For example, I had a T-1 connection to my house when I was a work at home programmer, and the rate was $400/month. It was the only high speed connection available to me at the time (no cable, and we are too far from the central office for DSL, but because T-1 is regulated, the phone company has to provide it wherever it provides a landline). Well, the T-1 bill would have jumped to $700/month starting next month, and we decided that enough was enough, and cancelled the service. Right now, my only options are 3G networking (Sprint and Verizon) or satellite (hughes/wildblue), both of which have bandwidth caps. Both Sprint and Verizon offer service with 5 gigabytes/month service, and seem to be a much better deal than satellite. I went with Sprint, because my neighbors have been using it for a bit. It is fast enough that I can get a VPN connection to work, though the upload speeds and ping latencies are a little slower than I had with the T-1. In theory, Verizon Fios will be here within the year, and I hoping to get business class service from them.
Who ever said that ? I've never seen it mentioned anywhere that 7 is faster than XP.
New things are always on the horizon
Thanks for pointing that out but that simplistic explanation doesn't cover it. Besides a 1Hz pulse there are also irregular flashes and occurs when applications are not open (so it's not just web caching etc). I also don't get this stuff on Ubuntu. It is something that happens in Windows only. No problem for USB if it is read-only but I don't think it is.
Ok I demand fiber for $15/month!
What's that? You say my only options for broadband are Verizon, Comcast and Clearwire? And none have fiber? And their cheapest plans for fiber are twice that, monthly?
Look, assuming you're talking about American dollars (thus, located in the US), you must realize that your situation is unique. The vast majority of the population doesn't have the ISP option you have. Whatever it is-- since you didn't share your provider, I suppose you could just be bullshitting.
Comment of the year
I called the local cable company, phone company, electric, my cell carrier, and the city hall demanding this... didn't work... still on a crappy connection with trouble streaming hulu low-q feeds.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Is there any reason you can't use an external optical drive to install Win7 on a netbook?
Have you tried going into "Resource Monitor" to see what's accessing the disk? Note that I'm assuming that functionality was carried over to Windows 7 from Vista.
It might not be faster than XP but it certainly feels faster. After my motherboard got fried I installed a new one and decided to go with a clean install of Windows 7, which I'm using right this moment and it feels very fast and stable. As a matter of fact I have not felt this good on Windows ever since I beta tested Win2000 and even the betas of that one were pretty stable to the point that I ended up replacing my 98 with 2000 entirely.
Shrug. I'm writing this response on a Z530 powered Fujitsu U820 with 1 GB of RAM. In Washington Square Park. And I mean writing: the pen input on Windows 7 is fantastic. 1 BSOD in a month of use-which was heat related (I left the thing on in a bag). The constraints on my use are not any worse than on similar hardware using XP or Ubuntu. I skipped Vista, but Win 7 has been very impressive.
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
I've been wondering for some time if the Windows ISO size now was because of the way the Vista installer works now. Supposedly it uses a disk image that it just copies over before the final configuration.
However, the same install disc is used for Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, and Vista Ultimate. I doubt that's changed with Windows 7.
Each of these being their own separate image would explain the file size...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Here in south africa, that $15/month gives me a 2GB cap per month. That excludes the line rental - only data. And the fastest DSL line speed is officially 1MB/s but it goes up to 4MB/s if you're lucky. It's another $9-$10 per GB after that.
Download caps are the norm for many ISPs in Australia.
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.
Don't forget every single download will be kept deep in Windows directory (windows update, downloads etc.) and will just stay there unless you turn off windows update service (stop) and delete them by hand. There is almost no reason to keep them since in case Windows totally breaks, those files will go away too. They don't have expire policy either. E.g. theoretical speaking, .NET 4.2 install won't really remove .NET 4.0 installer files. (no apt-get clean)
I am not exactly a fan of Linux or even OS X install policies but they are angels compared to Windows (including 7).
Different strokes for different folks.
Not everyone here on Slashdot is a low-level hardware geek. But I, for one, am a very good high-level hardware geek (please note that I didn't say "PC hardware").
I can interface high-level things in ways that make you low-level people turn befuddled and feeble.
It's good that you know something about building a switch-mode power supply -- I don't. And it's good that I know how to take that thing that your switch-mode power supply is delivering current to, and do something useful with it that you didn't intend.
I couldn't do my stuff without you guys building things for me to work with, but that doesn't mean that I'm not filling an important role that you [aren't|don't want to|can't].
It takes all kinds -- be nice.
Kid-proof tablet..
Yeah, half a dozen Prefetch processes and another half dozen miscellaneous Log services [$LogFile (NTFS Volume Log)] lastalive1.dat., SYSTEM.LOG etc. Not big writes but still chipping away at the drive (not good for USB drive, my original point).
One more format upon which I do not want their bloated, buggy, crappy rerelease of Vista.
I'll stick with Linux and XP still. Wake me up when MS pulls their head out of their ass and I don't lose FPS in whatever crap video game I still keep XP around for.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
If you put Windows 7 on a brand new quad core with 8gb of ram, it is indeed faster than XP running on the top of the line pc back when XP was first released.
Will I be able to run Win7 from the thumb drive, just like a fully installed Win7? Or will the thumb drive Win7 do nothing expect install Win7 on my hdd?
I'm all for this.
I think it's Microsoft's civic duty to encourage buyers of Windows 7 to download it
If for no reason than discouraging ISPs adopting outrageously small broadband caps.
You forgot to say "among windows users". Moving from 1 windows version to another is not equivalent to moving from windows to linux. So what was your point again ?
That there has been no significant migration to Linux even with the Live Distro to help pave the way?
Net Applications is, as I said, mass market.
The push behind Win 7 can't all be coming from the MSDN side - the developer, the IT pro.
The power users have to be out in force as well - the users comfortable downloading and installing an RC - and for Linux they should be the low-hanging fruit.
How hard to offer same basic delete functionality via update to windows update framework? As we all know, it is so advanced (!) that it is impossible to implement in any other browser rather than IE. It can be done even with a simple VB Basic script. In fact, someone should do it and post to sourceforge (as it MUST be open source).
Perhaps, XP SP3 owners, especially Netbook owners which became the primary target of XP may need to get rid of gigabytes (yes, gigabytes) of updates without stopping update service, hunting the file salad (in directory which is NOT recommended to browse/modify just like Apple System folder) and delete them praying they won`t break anything?
This kind of "blaming the guy for being a troll because he didn`t agree" belongs to some iSystem, not Windows.
Cunt. Motherfucker. Cum dripping from your father's anus.
There, be offended. Also, welcome to the internet. Your old-fashioned oppressive ideas of etiquette are meaningless here.
There are several providers, in Sweden. That's why we are well ahead of the rest of the world in terms of clashes with the media industry. They won't sell content to reasonable prices so people share with each other.
Flamebait? You must be jealous ;)
Great stuff Microsoft. But i-Flapp is doing this already. And itâ(TM)s only $10. I use it all the time, so thereâ(TM)s no way that Iâ(TM)m gonna pay extra to upgrade to Windows 7 now.
This is not big news when there is a product like i-Flapp that lets you port your applications and settings from one system to another even if the other system does not have the software loaded. You can buy this now and do not have to wait until October for Microsoft.