Windows 7 Highly Compressed

fakeasdf said:

I just downloaded the super compressed. Not only does it not pass the CRC, but stuff is totally pulled out of the iso :) So, if we consider pulling stuff out of the ISO a new method of compression, then I guess yall are right :P

Yes you are right there fakeasdf we must now consider taking things out of the original to be a form of compression.

win7 said:

I still maintain it can be done, not really sure how i could prove it without linking to a warez site but i have tried a 300mb compressed version of build 7000 and it DID work. I didn't test it long term but it seemed fine. It just takes ages to extract.

I have also tried a <10mb copy of office 2003 that also worked fine.

It can and has been done.

It worked and it being a *fully installed and validated* version of Windows 7 and / or office are 2 *entirely* different animals.

With vLite, for example, there were folks ripping out oodles of things from the Vista installer CD, and one guy had it down to 500 MB as a standard installer. As jimbo mentioned earlier the Office 'lite' version was the same thing.

But, with Student / Teacher, IIRC, you either don't get Powerpoint or Access, not all the other stuff like Infopath, all the templates and fonts and such - it is a *shaved* down version.

fakeasdf said:

I just downloaded the super compressed. Not only does it not pass the CRC, but stuff is totally pulled out of the iso :) So, if we consider pulling stuff out of the ISO a new method of compression, then I guess yall are right :P

Exactly - anyone can claim til they are blue in the face that "I have one that works" _ but let's compare it next to the real thing and see what has been ripped out of it and how everything works or doesn't work - I've been at this for a long time, and unless you have a reason to use a cut down version (and in that case you're not really helping in the Beta test process - you start yanking things out you can rarely be 100% sure that any problems you encounter are not due to that missing stuff) there is simply no point.

If you have bandwidth problems, you can ask someone you know to DL the ISO. If you have no DVD writer, you can use alternate methods (boot from USB, mount ISO in VCD and perform an upgrade or a new install using the installer to partition your HD)....

Also, how many of you are security experts and can *guarantee* that the stuff that has been removed is not integral to having a safe and secured Win7 install? For example, if UAC has been completely ripped out, then you're just getting a faster XP box that needs 5 layers of security to work reasonably safely....

RST101 said:

Yes you are right there fakeasdf we must now consider taking things out of the original to be a form of compression.

Yeah, something the script kiddies seem to not notice or care for. "Wow, I got it down to 200 MB" = yeah, well, with the full 2.x GB install it installs in all of 10 minutes. And with my connection, 2.2 GB takes me under 30 minutes to DL....even with the speed of my processor, why would I even bother with a 300 MB unverified image?

Sounds to me like the uncompressed files are reporting the wrong size. There is NO way that 9MB will extract to 3.5GB, that's nearly 389/1 compression ratio & it's just not physically possible. I'm no expert on compression but i've been using compression programs since PKZIP was used in MSDOS.

Take the installation of Windows 7 for example. A 2.35GB DVD once installed will take up nearly 8GB, that's a 3.4/1 commpression ratio.