Should Microsoft sell Windows 7 on USB Drives?

Rumors are floating around that Microsoft is thinking about selling Windows 7 on USB Drives. For Netbook owners this could come as welcomed news. Netbooks don’t normally have a DVD drive in them, so owners have to find another route to use to install Windows. They could buy an external drive and use that, but a USB drive could make things a lot easier.

Right now you can download a copy of Windows, and put it on a spare USB drive yourself. Installing from a USB drive is a lot faster compared to a DVD drive, and to some people, can be a lot more convenient. If Microsoft were to build on this, they could make installing a fresh copy of Windows a lot smoother.

Imagine a new feature on ‘USB install drives’ that would give users the ability to customize the installation. You could install it once, and all the settings you pick out fall into an install profile for that machine. You could even add your own programs like to be installed, so everything gets put on at once. Windows could even be given the ability to manage license keys for programs.

CD/DVD drives aren’t used nearly as much as they use to be. A few years ago, there was always some disk in my drive spinning away, either installing something or storing and reading data. Now it’s lucking to run twice a month at the most. USB storage is getting so cheap now that it would make sense to start distributing large software packages on them. (Stuff that reaches multiple gigabytes can still take a while to download.) A drive is still more expensive than a blank disk, but wouldn’t be so sensitive to a little dust or one bloody scratch.