WHOA! Windows 10 to be sold on USB drives – what a time to be alive Truly these are magical days: Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 10 will indeed be sold on USB thumb drives rather than just on optical discs, confirming internet mumblings that have been current for some time. Over on Amazon.com, pre-order pages show that the operating system will be available on media other than DVDs. A …
If MS follow the Apple model then the lifetime of W10 will be around 12 months.
But.... you say.... What about all those businesses that are on Windows 7 (if they are lucky that is)?
My answer is:- Do MS even care about businesses with 24/36/48/60 month upgrade cycles any longer?
As I see it, their plan is to get everyone onto the latest OS ASAP and then hit everyone with the subscriptions or else (like Adobe) tactic.
Yeah, I'm a sceptic but IMHO W10 is not far from becoming septic (like Vista)
Steve Davies 3: "My answer is:- Do MS even care about businesses with 24/36/48/60 month upgrade cycles any longer?"
Not to be a pedant, but that's a question. To which my answer is that El Reg published a story yesterday about Windows 10 end of support date. I can't remember the exact date, but I believe it was 2020 for mainstream support and 2025 for extended support - much the same as most modern-ish Windows operating systems and hardly an indication that they don't care about longer business cycles.
Unlike Apple, Microsoft's core customer base is organisations, not consumers. Although they may be moving towards a more incremental "Apple style" release cycle, there's no way they'd be able to move to a shorter "Apple style" support model.
That said I would not be surprised to see it put into a subscription model in the near future (with "free upgrades"). Another thing I could see is support for Home versions to be restricted to say 3 years, with only Pro or higher versions qualifying for the typical 10 years of support we've seen in the past.
Have you ever been to an optical disc pressing plant. There's a reason mass-produced opticals are described as being "pressed": they literally press a metallic disc with the pits and so on, much like they did with phonograph records. Then the protective underlayer goes on top (last I checked, they press the discs upside-down). Anyway, they can do this faster than any burner can hope to achieve (like a disc every few seconds). Why would the discs have to be burned individually?
"Each DVD has to be burned."
That only happens for very low volumes - usually from "home-made" sources. Commercial volumes are mechanically pressed like vinyl.
You should be able to see the difference. A pressed DVD or CD has an even silver colour to the playing side. A burned one has a distinct colour, usually blue-ish - and you can see the outer silver band where the recording had not filled the whole disk blank.
@P.Lee
Is this what you are looking for...
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722358%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
It must be horrible to be intellectually challenged :-)
[The OS is not as much of a problem as the persons behind the keyboard...] Personally I would suggest the people use both systems and get the best of both worlds...
Even when Apple did supply the sticks, they emulated USB DVD-ROM drives; hideously ironic considering what they (and the App Store) were supposedly replacing.
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in the Wintel scene though. I wonder if M$ will also deliver read-only media, and how the various quirky PC BIOSes will cope. I expect the demand for DVD will still be there for the machines that don't USB-boot, or do so in a way not compatible with the drives being put out. On the plus side we might see more uniformity in BIOSes.
You get your software comes on this ROM chip thingy that has no legs on it that you plug into a socket and you turn it on and eventually <bing bong> you computer is up and running and then you do this weird 'install' thing that hardly seems necessary really and instead of getting a good old fashioned BASIC prompt you get this strange cartoonish picture on the TV with an arrow that moves around everytime the cat chases that mouse thing and its a devilish job getting the old cassette player with a data tape working these days.
Going back to my BBC Micro.
Is this a "run anywhere" live USB stick, or just a copy you have to install and separately 'activate' on any PC you wish to use it on?
And how do you make a back-up copy, is it just a 'dd' style operation or will these sticks have some anti-copy arrangement?
Of course, other OS have had this for years and no license restrictions, so lets see how the arguments stack up.
> "Is this a "run anywhere" live USB stick, or just a copy you have to install and separately 'activate' on any PC you wish to use it on?"
The most obvious question, and I had to scroll down more than half the comments to see if anybody had asked/answered it.
Personally I'd like to see the former. I might actually buy one if I'd could run 'windows on a stick', as I'd certainly never install it (as I usually want a long stick in hand before I'd touch it) - although $199 seems steep, and the 'home' version would probably seem crippled after 15 years on linux, but it might do for all those little things (read: companies ) that I can't interact with on linux.
My experience tells me the latter is more likely however. What's more, it'll likely wipe any other Os already on your system as it installs itself in it's arrogance.
The "run off the USB Stick" is called Windows To Go. It's been available since oh, 2011. It has required certain USB sticks though to ensure performance.
This new info is likely just a case of replacing the DVD for retail copies. You've been able to download the ISO and use the Windows7 USB tool to make your own USB build drive since 2009.
I'm sorry but can I get it on (back of a fag packets maths, 3gb/1.2mb) 2500 5 1/4 inch floppy disks?
If not then I'm just not interested. I think I'll stick with MS-DO3 6.22 though I still think 3 1/2 inch disks are the work of satan, I never upgraded because 6.66 is the number of the beast.
Windows on a USB stick. Practical, for sure, better read speeds than a DVD for certain, but a basic USB stick is eminently copyable.
Given that you have to pay for these sticks (instead of downloading it for free on your PC), that has to mean that the USB stick has some form of DRM protection to prevent it being copied, otherwise they won't be selling many and we'll see the ISO on Pirate Bay the day after they start selling them.
Which we probably will see anyway.
There is no point in avoiding the copy as the authentication is usually done using the eponymous MS 25 digit "Licence key".. I very much doubt that they will allow full copies to be installed without the Licence Key being supplied from somewhere.
Obviously in the case of an upgrade I would presume that there will be a routine which verifies if the existing hard disk already has W7 or W8 and then uses some logic to determine if the upgrade can proceed.
Interesting observation from an NHS Windows 7 rollout from a few months back on a mix of Lenovo and Dells, mainly laptops
Using the same USB drives, around 5% of approx 1000 machines wouldn't install. They would boot off the drives, but then not "see" the drive contents. No apparent reason for it, in some cases apparently identical machines would either consistently work or not work. Resetting / defaulting BIOSes made no change. On some machines changing the brand of pen drive made a difference - but on the next, apparently identical machine, it wouldn't. Really weird. All had Intel USB3 chipsets, yet the behaviour was so randomly variable.
I forsee troubles with these Win10 drives
Probably shitty UEFI implementations, but I'm not sure when it comes to Windows.
I have only had two problems with Linux USB "live" sticks, firstly with old PCs (think 2006 era) which don't see a USB stick as a simple bootable HDD and often ask you if its a floppy or CD, etc (none of which seem to work).
The other is very new PC motherboards with secure boot that failed to boot Linux but said bugger all about the reason. Only poking about in the BIOS/UEFI settings did I find that secure boot was enabled.
UEFI BIOS writers, a pox on them all!
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