Foresight?

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy
James Madison (American 4th US President (1809-17), and one of the founding fathers of his country. 1751-1836)

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

USB Install...

I was doing some digg'in and found this article about installing Vista from a USB driver rather than from the DVD for a faster installation. The article was entitled "How to install Windows Vista from a USB Flash Drive" @ OTGNET and it really did a good job of making this HOW TO in a quick and simple way...although I don't agree with their drive choice as there are faster drives out now if you go and look (i.e. Patriot Extreme Performance with it's mackin' 32MB/sec read speed, 26MB/sec write speed specs).

Anyhow...after reading the article I began to wonder why Microsoft and any other software developer don't utilize USB drives as an installation media. I would be willing to pay a little more for the convenience of having whatever software sold already on a USB drive. I can see a market emerging for this type of media distribution via flash drive...albums, movies, software, games, and so on. I am sure, depending on the size of any given market, that the flash drive manufacturers would give a significant cut for volume purchases of these drives and in the end not add to much to the overall cost of having or selling software on a USB drive.

I guess the really "HARD" part is convincing a software company that this is a viable means of distribution. EA was almost there when they offered a USB Flash drive to those who pre-ordered BF2142...now if only they would go that extra step and just put the game on the drive. I imagine with time you will start seeing this as a more common media for distribution, but for now we just aren't there yet.

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