Microsoft has shown Windows 7 running on netbooks even since it first introduced the operating system, however, helping consumers getting it on there may prove a bit tricky. According to CNET, Microsoft is considering offering Windows 7 on a thumb drive so that netbook owners are able to easily upgrade their machines in case they lack a DVD drive, and are unable to use an external one.Even though Microsoft is considering selling Windows 7 on a thumb drive, there are other options for netbook users to upgrade. Less tech-savvy consumers could pay for someone else to do it, such as a service like Best Buy's Geek Squad. More technically literate consumers could order Windows 7 as a download and put it on their own thumb drive, or use an external DVD drive.
Another hurdle Microsoft needs to overcome is since most netbook owners running a Microsoft operating system are running Windows XP, users will have to backup their data and do a clean install of Windows 7, since it does not support an in-place upgrade from Windows XP. Netbook owners who don't realize they're running Linux, and not Windows, may also be confused when attempting to "upgrade" as well, since a large number of lower priced netbook systems ship with the open source operating system and not Windows XP.
There's no word on whether desktop and notebook users will be able to officially utilize Microsoft's thumbstick version of Windows 7, providing the company does offer the option.
I don't need anything bigger than the Mac OS X box (see here).
I haven't seen a single DVD drive fail in years..... maybe buy better brands?
I have seen the same happen to Sony, LG and Samsung drives. And on my Laptop, DVDs burnt using the TSST Corp drive isn't readable anywhere (even though the burning status was shown to be successful). Its under warranty, and I am on the third drive within just 10 months of buying.
I am ready to pay a bit more than pay for something I can't boot up from (more likely than not, the boot device selector times out on DVD boot before my DVD drive spins the DVD up and is ready for reading).
Hang on, just let me download the damn ISO and I will choose which physical media I will put it on.
I've bought 3 DVD drives in the last 10 years. A DVD-ROM back in '99, then a DVD-RW and then a dual-layer DVD-RW. All Pioneer and all still work fine. reliability is awesome and you don't even have to pay through the nose for them.
What the heck does that even mean? Why would they will offer it but not let people use it officially?
But the installation media is the same for all versions, you just get different keys to unlock features
I don't think thats true mate. I'm sure I read recently in an article right here on Neowin that Microsoft is moving away from the one media for all versions approach with Windows 7.
As long as Home Premium, Pro, Ultimate are all on one DVD I could care less about the rest but it would be nice if Starter and Home Basic was included too, but not likely as they will be only OEM options. I was tired of the XP days having to have several XP discs. OEM's of Pro and Home, Retail of Home and Pro, VLK of Pro, then came Tablet PC and Media Center editions which added yet another disc and required the OEM XP Pro SP2 disc that would recongize the key. These are all 32bit editions too, it was getting really silly.
Honestly the Vista solution was great, you had one source file on the DVD to install multiple editions, they had basically a transforms file to install based upon the key or edition selected, much simpler than XP and it would be easier to have as few discs as possible for duplication sakes.
I don't think that is true, it makes more sense to keep the media the same
That would be incorrect because if they did split it up the whole idea of 'anywhere upgrade' would fall to pieces. Anywhere upgrade is based on the customer having everything on the DVD that they need.
Don't you have to put the boot sector on it too by using BOOT.exe to make the drive bootable for the installer?... and make the partition active on the flash drive
Keyboard warrior fail. Not quite that simple.
Caveat: Partition must be formatted as FAT32 or NTFS using a tool that supports writing bootmgr compatible boot code. For example Windows Vista or later. Earlier versions of Windows and many other tools write boot code that is compatible with ntldr only.
I could also imagine blue, green, and black flash drives glowing with the Windows flag colors.
I cant even believe there are people out there that use these noobs.
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