Comments on: Thumbing Windows 7 onto Netbooks

Microsoft may sell Windows 7 on a thumb drive in order to allow Netbook owners to upgrade to the new version of the operating system, CNET News has learned.

[empirestatebuddy]

I think it's hilarious that Europe isn't getting the discounted Windows upgrades. The EU is acting ridiculous and so Microsoft is giving it right back to them (unfortunately, it's the EU consumer who has to pay... figuratively AND literally).

My question is... can Europeans order Windows 7 from the American version of Amazon... or can they order the discounted download from the Microsoft website? I mean, there has to be a way for a savvy European consumer to get around the EU, right?

[codynews]

I don't see why someone in a EU country couldn't just go to amazon.com

[Random_Walk]

"I don't see why someone in a EU country couldn't just go to amazon.com"

...or an OEM reseller, or pricewatch, or from the MSDN sub (which costs about the same per annum), or etc.

...just like those of us in the US do when we want to buy software, but don't want to pay full price. Leona Helmsley once remarked "only the poor pay taxes" - we can modify that phrase to say that "only the tech-ignorant pay retail" ;) .

Personally, I think it's hilarious that, for the first time in their entire history, Microsoft is releasing their flagship product at such deep _retail_ discounts in the first place. Feeling the pressure from Vista's failures, methinks.

[BBRover]

..cuz you need a CC with an American Address, thats why you cant go to amazon.com

[businesscontacts]

BBRover, I order all the time from Amazon because it is one of the sellers that allow you to pay with a Credit Card that doesn't have a billing address in USA.

[lilshaneman3993]

no i dont think Europeans can buy any Microsoft os from the u.s. because once the os leaves its country it was made in it becomes not genuine.....or in microsofts eyes (illegal)

[ferricoxide]

Too bad a WAN-based PXE boot/build wouldn't work.

[Random_Walk]

It is certainly possible if there's an ethernet port involved, but even then, not really practical.

[Vegaman_Dan]

I use PXE boot now to install from the network, but that's only possible with internal deployment servers. If you were to try to do that across the open internet, you'd be subject to all sorts of security issues that are better addressed elsewhere.

A USB stick install is really the easiest and fastest way.

[El_Segfaulto]

PXE is pretty easy. And since Vista and presumably 7 aren't based on a HAL then one could customize an image for deployment to any machine.

[Lerianis3]

Thank you.... that would be the absolute SMARTEST thing to do: sell Windows 7 on a USB thumb drive or SD memory card (almost EVERY desktop and laptop now have those slots).

I just hope that they get smart and don't put in that 'control' that keeps people with Windows 7 RC on their computers from easily upgrading.

[ikramerica--2008]

AFAIK, the netbooks won't boot from the memory card slot, at least not directly. I was able to get mine to boot from the memory card only by having a valid bootable USB stick also plugged in. Then that activated the USB boot option in the boot menu, and then I could select the memory card instead. But without the USB stick plugged in, I couldn't do this. YMMV.

[Vegaman_Dan]

@ikramerica--2008:

My Acer Aspire One boots from the SD card slot without issue.

This is a case of different options in different machines. But yeah, you can do it.

[Techedots]

Have any one tried windows 7? Any feed back ?

[CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.]

[rakker91]

It's been my gaming OS since the RC was released and I have only good things to say about it. The only problems I've had have been around Linksys devices. They don't have a driver that really supports their wireless products (WMP110 wouldn't work at all and WUSB54G has stability issues). Otherwise, it's rock solid and feels a lot faster than Vista.

[Forked_Tongue]

I'm using it on my netbook that I'm posting with now, Asus 900A, 2 GB, and 16 GB ssd (Transcend's fast version) using the 32 bit version. Much better than eee Ubuntu netbook remix (it seemed the video hardware acceleration didn't work on it), about as quick as Xandros but not as fast pupeee (though it didn't natively support the correct resolution 1024 * 600). This supports the resolution out of the box though when connected to an external monitor it wouldn't scale correctly even when the monitor's driver was installed. Much better than XP Home in most parts though some programs took multiple attempts to install (OpenOffice, PeerGuardian, BlueSoleil Bluetooth drivers, etc) due to claims of digital signature problems. I'm on the preorder list to buy it when it launches, so I'm very happy with it.

PS: Using it with two other desktops usng the 64 bit versions, did encounter a major slowdown copying a large file, the only problem with it.

[eswinson]

I 'm actually really starting to be impressed by Microsoft. They are really starting to do some very "Market Aware" Windows 7 is probably their best version ever. Now they are addressing the increasing population of computer users not tied to cd/dvd drives. Even Apple in their infinite wisdom shipped my MacBook Air with a dvd install disc of the OS. Even though the DVD drive was optional. A pen drive would be awesome.... Would be even better if you could write all the patches and drives to it as they came out so a new install would be up to date.

[interoperate]

@eswinson

You said "Windows 7 is probably their best version ever." How can you make this statement when Windows 7 isn't even released!

Prior to the release of Windows Vista, lots of reviews said it was the best ever Windows. I suggest you hold off making such statements until the product is released.

[topgunb2]

I;ve been using win7 rc and i can say its best version of windows ever

[Seaspray0]

@interoperate. It hasn't been released, but the beta and RC1 has. All reviews have been of these two. If you look at past history, the RC1 release is what the "gold" release tends to be, so the reviews are relevent.

[DosEquisXX]

Wait, what's this about needing to do a clean install if going from a higher end version of Vista to a lower version of 7? I have two computers with Vista Ultimate and just bought the upgrade DVDs for Windows 7 Home Premium, don't tell me I have to do clean installs on them both. What a pain!

[Vegaman_Dan]

It's always a good idea to do a clean install when changing major versions of an operating system. This is normal practice. If you want to do an upgrade, you can, but you're going to bring whatever instabilities you had with your prior OS into the new one.

Why borrow trouble?

[celticbrewer]

"Microsoft also sells a downloadable version of Windows today, so, in theory it could do the same with Windows 7, allowing buyers to put the OS on their own thumb drive. "

It is. If you go and pre-order Win7 now, there's a download option.

[CoachBill1]

Stop the crap! Vista works equally well as XP on a netbook with 1GB of memory. In fact, an HP mininote has a better experience rating(1.8) than newly released inexpensive HP desktops(1.0). It's all dependent on the integrated graphics card.

[Inconnux]

perhaps if you are only running email and web browsing you don't notice the performance hit... for those of us who run performance sensitive application, Vista is a poor OS. 1gb of ram??? hahahahahaha sorry my 3gb laptop runs at half the speed as my 2yr old desktop with only 2gb ram (running XP)... proof? Fritz 10 benchmark was over 2x the rating as the brand new vista machine.... If I can get XP performance out of the vista machine, upgrading is a no brainer.

[M_K_Higa]

I installed Widows 7 on an Asus Eee Box B202. Boot up is slow. IE8 responds slow. Originally purchased this box for my kids, but due to slow response, they've hijacked my machine - which is running Windows 7 on a regular desktop. I think I'll put Ubuntu on the Asus Eee Box.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Win7 fits nicely on a USB stick. You can use pretty much any USB stick out there that is 4Gb in size. HP has a free utility called DISKPART that will allow you to make the USB stick bootable and then you simply copy the installation media files from your original DVD or disk image.

This makes doing installs from a USB stick take around 15-20 minutes. The longest delay is dependant upon your network connection to obtain any drivers it needs for your hardware from online resources.

If you do an 8Gb USB stick, you can even preload things like Office, Adobe Photoshop, or whatever other business apps you want to have include for your corporate use (or personal, but I'm thinking of corporate uses primarily).

It's a pretty slick way to do it, and it works on any PC that can boot from a USB port- which is pretty much everything these days.

I hadn't heard that MSFT had been considering making it available on USB media though. That's cool and would be a welcome change to the packaging. I also hope the make the stick hardlocked to read-only so it doesn't accidentally get erased or overwritten by someone who leaves it in the port without thinking about it. :)

[Seaspray0]

DISKPART is a microsoft program. You can find it on XP and above disks. It's the replacement for FDISK.

[objectcentral]

Hey, I just discovered you don't need to go to all that effort to make a bootable thumb drive for upgrading a netbook. You need a second computer with a DVD drive, and a USB hard drive with 8 or 10 GB free. Make a folder on the USB Drive (for example, Win7), then copy the entire contents of a 32-bit Upgrade DVD to that Win7 folder on the USB drive.

Now plug the USB drive into your netbook (it does need a working XP or Vista on it), and run setup.exe from the folder on the USB drive. (You'll need to do a custom install if you're upgrading XP) The secret is that the install drive does not have be bootable! You'll need maybe 6 GB or more free on the netbook's drive, which may be an issue for 16GB solid state drives. And it takes about an hour and a half (vs. 20 minutes on a real machine).

But it really worked for me - this seems much simpler. Microsoft has apparently made it easy to install from almost any media - it copies whatever it needs to the target disk, so a booting install disk is not necessary.

But you will still have the issue of migration of data and software! Use the Win7 data transfer wizard for the data, and be sure you have the media you need to reinstall your software before you upgrade! And when you have everything going again, you can delete the windows.old directory created during the custom install.

[bar86]

But why upgrade ? Just because Microsoft needs more $ ?

[Atomic1fire]

I personally don't upgrade right away, I give it two years or longer,
depends on when the computer parts fail, since I normally upgrade it then,
there are several good reasons for upgrading,
More support, since xp is pretty much on a deathwish sooner or later (though Im still using it)
Newer features
Games will probably support it from the get go, and take advantage of newer graphics and stuff if available.
however, people who are not as adventerous should probably consider waiting a year or two before upgrading, I normaly completely ignore that rule when it comes to my browser, but the OS is a little more important and difficult to change at whim.

[Kwasiowusu]

@ bar86 , why upgrade?
Because Win 7 is much better than any Windows operating system ever launched. Personally, I almost exclusively use Windows 7 on my dual bootVista/Win 7 laptop. After tasting the delights of using Win 7, I am finding it hard to go back to Vista again.

[Inconnux]

Why upgrade? because Vista is a performance DOG.

[bar86]

Sorry, I ment why upgrade from XP, of course. I've tried W7 and it works perfectly.
Still, I do not see any reason to upgrade, it does not have any advantage on XP.

[sargess25]

it has been said before -

Windows 7 is.... A 32-bit extension to a 16-bit graphical interface, sitting on an 8-bit operating system, originally written for a 4-bit processor by a 2-bit company without ONE BIT of common sense

worth repeating again :-)

[SactoGuy018]

Wrongo. :-)

Windows 7 is actually an direct descendant of Windows NT 3.1, which has EVERYTHING running in 32-bit mode for large memory access and stability reasons, unlike Windows 95/98/ME. Windows NT used the Windows 95 interface design but programming for Windows NT graphical API was quite a bit different than programming for Windows 95 graphical API.

[monkeyfun14]

Lol your funny.

But did you know OSX didn't become true 64 bit until Leopard?

[Kwasiowusu]

@ sargess25 , worth repeating again, everything in your post is entirely FALSE!
Not only are you ignorant and clueless about Win 7, you are clearly out to spread as much FUD , disinformation, and anti-Microsoft propaganda as you can. Luckily, you are not gonna be allowed to get away with it.

[Seaspray0]

@sargess25. Haven't you figured out why apple no longer runs the mac/pc ads? People have wised up to the smear campaign and it doesn't work anymore. Neither does yours.

[te316]

you're a bit of nit wit

[alqaqish]

Who really cares if MS decides to sell Windows 7 on a thumb drive.

I installed Windows 7 RC on a Dell Mini 10v and it runs great. Even aero works! The process was straight forward and simple. I followed the detailed instructions posted on dotnetwizard.net

http://dotnetwizard.net/hacks/how-to-bootinstall-vista-from-a-usb-flash-drive/

The installation was quick and relatively simple. Everything on the Mini 10v worked without the need to install or search for compatible drivers.

[Inconnux]

The biggest problem with those netbooks is that there is no upgrade path... alot of people don't want to do a clean install and wipe out all their old settings.

[shellcodes_coder]

you can transfer settings

[MagiMamoru]

Do they make flash drives this big?

:-) ;-) :-D :-P :-)

[shellcodes_coder]

oops Windows 7 pre-orders claim Amazon's top sales spots; bad new for Apple and their upcoming endangered os--snow leopard

[shellcodes_coder]

*news

[geekspeak09]

I think that Intelligent thumb drives like i-Flapp are currently providing users with an easy mobile storage solution and will reduce the impact that Windows 7 will have.

If you load your Windows applications through i-Flapp you can transport your applications on your existing thumb drive. I transfer stuff between my desktop and netbook all the time and my two systems are always synchronised. You can work on ANY computer or notebook, using your applications and settings, and best of all ? leave no digital footprint on the system.

So, I'll stick to what I've got for now. I don't think that I'll be paying a fortune for Windows 7 just because of a thumb-drive.