What's the next generation install media?

Everyone saying that optical media will stick around without some form of second media well your leaving out a large market that has just come about and that's netbooks or mini laptops without any optical drives. MS will have to use SD or USB for Win 7 to reach this fast growing market. I use a Mini HP as my main computer and I get told I have a sexy laptop or cool laptop always with the "where did you get it?" or How much was it? I think ATT is selling this same netbook with 3G installed netbooks are here and here to stay and we need OS's too and with SD and USB it just makes sense win 7 will come on one or the other cause they know if they don't someone else will and they would be smart to be the first major OS to adopt this growing market and a media that with MS new file system will make TB SD cards on our christmas list 2010.

macgyver2 said:

Everyone saying that optical media will stick around without some form of second media well your leaving out a large market that has just come about and that's netbooks or mini laptops without any optical drives. MS will have to use SD or USB for Win 7 to reach this fast growing market. I use a Mini HP as my main computer and I get told I have a sexy laptop or cool laptop always with the "where did you get it?" or How much was it? I think ATT is selling this same netbook with 3G installed netbooks are here and here to stay and we need OS's too and with SD and USB it just makes sense win 7 will come on one or the other cause they know if they don't someone else will and they would be smart to be the first major OS to adopt this growing market and a media that with MS new file system will make TB SD cards on our christmas list 2010.

This is what I was thinking when starting this thread. These computers are being shipped without DVD drives. There will come a day when all these people will have to do installs or repairs or whatever. You would think MS would offer something else as an option....which another post in this thread indicates they will offer flash drives as install media. Pretty cool. I would get one if I had the choice.

macgyver2 said:

Everyone saying that optical media will stick around without some form of second media well your leaving out a large market that has just come about and that's netbooks or mini laptops without any optical drives. MS will have to use SD or USB for Win 7 to reach this fast growing market.

Not really. You're forgetting that most netbooks are used with the pre-insalled O/S. On top of that, you can always attach a portable USB optical drive to install on those since they can boot to USB.

Eventually something will replace optical drives, but the current market isn't driving it no matter how much some people want things to be on flash thumbdrives, etc. I'd like to see it too, but I know it's not going to happen for a long time.

Then how does M$ plan to help those with netbooks since they have stated that windows 7 will be compatible with the new smaller laptops. mine came with XP and sorry not paying 50-100 dollars for a USB optical drive just to install an OS when a thumb drive is so much cheaper and easier. It wouldn 't make any sense to tell people they are making 7 work on netbooks if they didn't plan on a way to get it on them.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/22/m...etbooks-specs/

MS specs for netbooks why do this if they didn't plan on getting this OS to this market?

macgyver2 said:

Then how does M$ plan to help those with netbooks since they have stated that windows 7 will be compatible with the new smaller laptops. mine came with XP and sorry not paying 50-100 dollars for a USB optical drive just to install an OS when a thumb drive is so much cheaper and easier. It wouldn 't make any sense to tell people they are making 7 work on netbooks if they didn't plan on a way to get it on them.

Microsoft publishes maximum Windows 7 netbooks specs

MS specs for netbooks why do this if they didn't plan on getting this OS to this market?

Then you'll be out of luck.

As for your link, that's OEM, not customer installed.

Microsoft isn't interesting in getting existing netbook owners over to Windows 7. Microsoft has bigger plans and its outlook is much farther into the future than you or I would care to look. It wants Windows 7 to be the new Netbook O/S standard that will be on all of the new models coming out. Face it, if you have a netbook, your model is most likely already outdated (unless you purchased the new generation ones recently).

I have a netbook too: an Asus Eee PC 701 series (4G model). It works great with my custom XP install (and dual boots Linux), but I have no plans to put Windows 7 on it as that would surely eat up my storage space). If you have a newer netbook using an Atom processor and 16+GB of storage space, Windows 7 is an option for you, but you'd need to get it over to a USB thumbdrive yourself or borrow someone's USB-based DVD drive. Because I can tell now with 100% certainty that Windows 7 will not be released on flash media by Microsoft directly. Other companies may repackage it on flash memory for you, though, at a price on top of the cost of Windows 7.

The most common Windows 7 distro methods? Download to burn an ISO or move to USB yourself, DVD, and OEM pre-install. Nothing will change, yet