Monday, June 29th 2009
Microsoft Windows 7 to Ship on USB Flash Drives ?
We've learned that Microsoft might be considering the opportunity to distribute Windows 7 on USB flash drives to ease netbook owners when installing operating systems. Although nothing is confirmed yet, this approach makes distribution of Microsoft software products a lot more convenient, bravo Microsoft for the idea. These drives will be used primary for netbooks and computers without any optical drives installed.
Unfortunately, the use of USB flash drives for this tight segment is just one of the many choices Microsoft is thinking over. Currently the company sells a downloadable version of Windows, so the same might apply to Windows 7, also users might download the content to an external hard drive and then hook it up to their netbook or a notebook for installation, instead of buying the more expensive USB flash drive with the licensed software. Read more at CNET.
Source:
CNET News
Unfortunately, the use of USB flash drives for this tight segment is just one of the many choices Microsoft is thinking over. Currently the company sells a downloadable version of Windows, so the same might apply to Windows 7, also users might download the content to an external hard drive and then hook it up to their netbook or a notebook for installation, instead of buying the more expensive USB flash drive with the licensed software. Read more at CNET.
30 Comments on Microsoft Windows 7 to Ship on USB Flash Drives ?
When the OS itself costs in the 300 bucks range, I doubt most people would frown over a huge added extra cost of 2 $. I know I wouldn't and there are probably others that think like me.
And yes, they should make it read-only. But that's actually easy, since there are drives that come with a "read-only" switch, like floppy disks used to.
although, formatting a flash drive NTFS, running bootsect /nt60 driveletter:, then copying all the files off the disk is pretty simple IMO.