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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."
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.
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.
Lets play with some numbers. To be considered a broadband connection it has to be at least 256 Kb/sec. This works to about 32 KB/sec.
2.3 GB then would take almost 21 hours. 512Kb = 10.5 hours, 1024 = 5.25 hours, etc. (you can see the pattern)
Yeah, that would take a while. Even my home connection(5Mbit, so I'm going to call that 5000 Kb/sec (which I have held solid for a few hours at slightly above 600KB/sec) ) would be 1.1 hours. Still awfully long depending on if it was able to hold that the entire time.
Plus, 2.3GB is probably the full thing. Odds are they aren't going to install every thing (do you really need drivers for every video card they have for the initial install? You might just need the bare minimum for video and then get the drivers from the manufacturer's site post-install. Same thing with sound, network, chipset, etc). Then if you get (I haven't looked at the types of Win7, so using the Vista names) Home Basic, you are not going to have lots of things that they do have in the other versions, so you are going to have a much smaller initial install.
Hint: 4,3 Gb is the capacity of a DVD. And it was compressed with squashfs, too.
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."
I think you're looking for UNetbootin.
That's not a new idea at all. Mandriva already does that and it has been doing that for years. I mean, since the days of Mandrake 9.2, I believe. That means since the days of Ubuntu 5.04, now that it appears that everything linux has been somehow reduced and limited to Ubuntu.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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.
Not if they send out 64 MB thumb drives. :P
By the way: Does this still happen in reality? I haven't seen their CDs for a decade.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Ubuntu fits on a 700 Mb CD and is just as completely as Windows. Maybe more because it comes with Open Office.
No, you get a fully functional system off the CD, perhaps minus some oddball drivers. It is no less than Windows. Net access is not required for the install.
RAID.
I've tested a lot of Linux distros, but most of the leading distros seem to fit on one 700mb CD. Full OS with a good suite of applications.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
"They very kindly replied thanking me for the suggestion, but alas, it never materialized..."
^_^ Actually, it did. Grab the most recent copy of Ubuntu on a live CD, boot into it, go to "System", "Administration", and click "USB Startup Disk Creator".
It takes ANY ISO and makes a USB bootable with it. Have used it already, worked great for installing to an EEE.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.