Windows 7: Will Windows 7 be offered on USB drives?

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It's a hurban legend for now. And even if they would, it's gonna be sold with netbooks.

just how solid can a net-book be?! ....

anyway, as with ALL types of recordable media, theres the chance of failure. you could easily mess up a thumb drive (magnets, etc) as any cd/dvd (scratches, exposure, etc). one would think a thumb drive would be safer for the long run, but nothings perfect. it's really a decision that the consumer would have to weigh for themselves.
companies know this, but can easily conform the blind masses (not us, we're awesome) to use one or the other. who knows, maybe soon we'll be buying movies, music, and such on USB sticks. time will tell i guess.

I don't think magnets will affect a thumb drive at all. The only reason they affect floppies and HDDs are because the bits are stored by magnetic 'switches'. Flash drives work entirely different.

I think it will be a while before companies begin using flashdrives as a way to distribute media, unless it is done by request basis. Companies wouldn't be able to afford to mass produce flashdrive media as cheaply as they can DVD media. A DVD literally costs pennies to write media to, while it is significantly more to flash data to a thumbdrive. If companies do it in the near future, it will most likely be on a request basis, and it would cost more than getting the same media on a DVD. At least until data flashing becomes more efficient and cost friendly

The one main problem with this article is that the term "netbook" spans a very wide range of hardware, and can even vary by manufacturer. You can have a dual core CPU, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive with a 13" screen and one may call it a netbook, yet another with a single core Atom processor, 2GB RAM, 80GB SSD drive with 11" screen and they call it a notebook or laptop, not classify it as a netbook.
So what about these older laptops such as one I sold a few months back, it had a single core CeleronM 2.0GHz CPU, 768MB RAM, 80GB drive, and a 14" screen... it has lower specs than many new "netbooks" yet is still classified a laptop...
Right now it is all a marketing scam....

As for the USB or flash drives, even if MS decides not to, it would be easy enough to make a ISO or image of the Windows 7 DVD (or use vLite) and then use another program to write this image to the flash drive for installing on a laptop without a working disc drive. I did that for some customers not too long after Vista was released.... their laptop or PC did not have a disc drive (or it did not work) so this is the process I used.

I read MS is making manufacturers cap the RAM and CPU capabilities in the "netbooks" as part of the licence agreement so people will still buy laptops and desktops. Good business move I guess. If everyone could have a small device as powerful as a desktop....they would sell fewer copies of Windows. As for USB drives...I hope it happens. I would pay $5-10 for the drive.

M$ has already given specification for the term "Netbook"

you can read more from below link:

Netbook Max Specifications

Took me hours to figure out how to install XP to a netbook using a flash drive. Maybe I'm just slow?

Anyways, that is going to take a big flash drive. Maybe 4 GB?

I find this thread very interesting indeed, because........

In the 29 years that I've been working on personal computers, I have just recently walked into a retail store and BOUGHT my first, off-the-shelf PC.

After looking at the various offerings available at the local stores, and comparing features vs. price, I settled on the Acer Aspire ONE, Netbook.
The Cobalt Blue one. It matches my car.

It appears that Acer has done some upgrading to the little PC since it was first released, because a friends Acer netbook only has 1 gig of ram, and my unit just purchased at Office Depot has 1.5 gigs. That's the maximum ram that the little PC will take. I think the HD is 160 gig SATA. (Don't quote me) And, the cpu is the Atom.

I have to work on a lot of different PC's and Laptops in my business and this little Netbook is as much of a computer as any I've worked on.

It came with Windows XP Home (not my first choice) and I set it up exactly like I would any XP computer.
NOT having a CD drive was no big deal. I've been loading software on PC's from Flash Drives for several years and I find it actually much faster than using a CD and of course there's NOT the compatibility problem that I've seen with home made CD's.

Making a flash drive bootable and then copying an OS to it doesn't bother me at all. It's practically a "NON-EVENT".

Supplying an OS already set up on a Flash Drive just seems like the next obvious marketing strategy. Why not? Big companies like MS could buy a suitable sized FD for almost nothing in the quantities they would need.

Back to my Acer Aspire ONE, Netbook, it does everything that my main PC (desktop tower) does, but in a smaller package.
I even watch streaming videos of sports events, movies, etc. with no problem at all. In 29 years, this is the first PC that I've ever allowed into my bedroom.
During the initial setup, I set the desktop icon text size to 11 points, just one point larger than I'd normally set up for a standard size laptop. And the Horizontal text box size, to 70 instead of the normal 65.

I've also partitioned the little 160 gig HD to provide me with sufficient storage for non-essential files and Ghost backups of C:.

With a verifiable Ghost Image, "In the can" so to speak, I may try to upgrade the OS to Win-7. (just for grins and giggles)
I'm quite sure the little PC will run it OK.
The only problem I can foresee would be with drivers.
I can foresee NO problem loading Win-7 from a Flash Drive.
That should be a real Cake Walk.

Cheers Mates,
The Doctor