Microsoft Quietly Opens Windows 10 Pre-Orders On A New Physical Format

[Guest]

Amidst the hustle and bustle of Amazon's Prime Day, an interesting fact about Microsoft's upcoming operating system was discovered. Windows 10 will be the first Windows OS sold on USB Flash Drive.

Microsoft Quietly Opens Windows 10 Pre-Orders On A New Physical Format : Read more

 

[gangrel]

And while a stick costs more than a blank disc, what's the wholesale cost of a 4 Gb stick? Not much. And I wonder what the duplication rate is...I would think it'd be much faster, and quite probably cheaper, to create 1000 sticks, as opposed to 1000 DVDs.

 

[none12345]

A dvd probably costs about 1/100 of a cent to produce. Its injection molded.

But against a $100 licence cost, the $1 or so for the usb drive in bulk is nothing.

 

[TechyInAZ]

I hope you can buy a downloadable copy of windows 10 then just put it on your own USB drive. When windows 8 Pro was available for $20 a few years ago, I got it and it was a download off Microsoft.

 

[atheus]

Yo Crashman, aren't you glad I called Satya about that thing we talked about?

 

[jimmysmitty]

And while a stick costs more than a blank disc, what's the wholesale cost of a 4 Gb stick? Not much. And I wonder what the duplication rate is...I would think it'd be much faster, and quite probably cheaper, to create 1000 sticks, as opposed to 1000 DVDs.

It is also smarter since every new PC for the past 10 years has been able to boot to a flash drive and newer PCs are not coming with DVDs anymore since streaming and downloading has become much more common place. Most software you buy these days can be downloaded.

I hope you can buy a downloadable copy of windows 10 then just put it on your own USB drive. When windows 8 Pro was available for $20 a few years ago, I got it and it was a download off Microsoft.

It was $45 if you pre-ordered it and if you had bought a PC recently or a copy of 7 you could get it for $15 bucks instead. Thats what I did. Was well worth it.

 

[Karadjgne]

Guess I'm kinda old fashioned, I like my DVD. I've used the original DVD exactly 1 time, just to make a full copy, and after that I've used the copy a few times. Currently, the copy is now history courtesy of a scratch. What I haven't done, is lost the DVD, can't say as I can say that about a few USB sticks that developed legs. Or the USB I had some photos on that got erased when I failed to pay attention to what was actually on it.

I like the idea of the USB stick, especially for those with a case like nzxt h440, but I would still like the option. Wondering what's going to happen when I overwrite my 7 pro with direct dl of 10 from Windows. Thats gonna be a messy reinstall for sure.

 

[ohim]

Guess I'm kinda old fashioned, I like my DVD. I've used the original DVD exactly 1 time, just to make a full copy, and after that I've used the copy a few times. Currently, the copy is now history courtesy of a scratch. What I haven't done, is lost the DVD, can't say as I can say that about a few USB sticks that developed legs. Or the USB I had some photos on that got erased when I failed to pay attention to what was actually on it.

I like the idea of the USB stick, especially for those with a case like nzxt h440, but I would still like the option. Wondering what's going to happen when I overwrite my 7 pro with direct dl of 10 from Windows. Thats gonna be a messy reinstall for sure.

You can loose a DVD just as fast as an USB stick, just don`t use on daily basis that USB stick. Also, you install way much faster from a USB stick than from a DVD. My record was around 3-4 minutes from the first Next, till windows asked me for the finishing touches.

 

[SteelCity1981]

makes sense. more and more devices are coming without disc drives now. it's only a matter of time when disc drives go the way of the floppy disc as thumb drives continue to get cheaper and cheaper per gb. I have a disc drive on my laptop and I don't think I've ever used it once out of the 3 years that I've had this laptop. all my installations have been through over the internet, external HDD's or thumb drive devices. I honestly think the last time I burnt anything onto a disc was like 7 or 8 years ago..

 

[gangrel]

DVDs won't go away....just the built-in ones. An external USB 3.0 DVD will work just fine.

And small form factor is growing. We've got Gigabyte, Intel, and MSI to name 3 off the top of my head. And plenty of mini-ITX cases don't handle a DVD drive.

So I do agree that the DVD option isn't going ti disappear any time soon...but I think the *preferred* options will transition to a flash stick or a download.

Oh, and I track my OS sticks by tagging them, then hanging them on one of those small Command wall hooks, on the side of my computer desk. The tagging is just so I know what's on there, obviously; but probably Microsoft will label their stick with a Windows logo. Tagging probably won't be needed.

 

[danlw]

I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. If it's a fast flash drive, the install should go quicker also.

I would prefer an SD card format, personally. They would fit into an SD wallet better than USB drives (assuming more software vendors follow suit) But as common as SD cards are, they aren't quite as universal as USB.

 

[jaber2]

I have not had a DVD/BlueRay drive in over 10 years.

 

[tsnor]

what the DATA LIFE of a USB stick sitting in a cool drawer? Perhaps 3 to 10 years? Maybe less?

 

[gangrel]

I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. If it's a fast flash drive, the install should go quicker also.

I would prefer an SD card format, personally. They would fit into an SD wallet better than USB drives (assuming more software vendors follow suit) But as common as SD cards are, they aren't quite as universal as USB.

what the DATA LIFE of a USB stick sitting in a cool drawer? Perhaps 3 to 10 years? Maybe less?

I've had sticks that have lasted longer than that.
And if that's a serious concern, then just download it as well, and stash that on something you consider safer.

If this argument has validity, it would only be if Microsoft said that USB flash was the ONLY medium they would support.

 

[thundervore]

So, to all those people that were complaining about new cases being released without a 5.25 slot so they can install a CDROM drive just to install Windows because Windows only come on a CD...........................What is your excuse now?!!!!!

Also a 4GB drive may not cut it as the formatted capacity of 4GB is only 3.72GB, it may not be enough once a service pack comes out as I remember when I tried to put Windows 7SP1 on a 4GB USB, I had to go with a 8GB drive.

The only downfall I can see of this is if they outsource this to china and some genius hacker decides to mess with the drives and load root kits and Trojans onto them to steal all your info for the black market and your nudes for the rest of us.

 

[mben]

So Tom is using the Press Release from Microsoft's January 2015 announcement as today's news? Come out, Microsoft announced this 6 months ago.

 

[AnimeMania]

I was hoping there might be a paid upgrade path for older Windows XP computers. I would be willing to pay something like $10 for a Windows 10 upgrade, but not $120 (that is probably more than the computer is worth). I guess I will stick with Windows XP, since I rarely use the laptop. It seems a shame, since Windows 10 probably works really well on under-powered older Window XP using computers.

 

[griffon9]

If you need optical drive buy an external one. I hate all these retards crying about no optical drive

 

[alidan]

i have never had a thumb drive that lasted more than 2 years, but i have some burnt cd's and dvds that are nearing 12-15 years old that still work, and the only legitimate dvd/cd that ever broke for me was due to physically melting one day because the sun hit the case weird...

though just my personal experiance at play there.

 

[mrmez]

MS has to do it quietly, because other companies started doing it years ago.

 

[Darkk]

I was hoping there might be a paid upgrade path for older Windows XP computers. I would be willing to pay something like $10 for a Windows 10 upgrade, but not $120 (that is probably more than the computer is worth). I guess I will stick with Windows XP, since I rarely use the laptop. It seems a shame, since Windows 10 probably works really well on under-powered older Window XP using computers.

That is the problem with older hardware running Windows XP. Most would say it works great for I what use it for but as technology evolves it makes less sense to keep that aging hardware alive. Newer video cards, processors, RAM and etc. happens all the time. It doesn't make economic sense to keep supporting old hardware. It's like Ford keep supporting Model Ts while it's coming out with 1955 Bel Airs. Same thing.

 

[AnimeMania]

I was hoping there might be a paid upgrade path for older Windows XP computers. I would be willing to pay something like $10 for a Windows 10 upgrade, but not $120 (that is probably more than the computer is worth). I guess I will stick with Windows XP, since I rarely use the laptop. It seems a shame, since Windows 10 probably works really well on under-powered older Window XP using computers.

That is the problem with older hardware running Windows XP. Most would say it works great for I what use it for but as technology evolves it makes less sense to keep that aging hardware alive. Newer video cards, processors, RAM and etc. happens all the time. It doesn't make economic sense to keep supporting old hardware. It's like Ford keep supporting Model Ts while it's coming out with 1955 Bel Airs. Same thing.

Even though my laptop is several years old, the processor is faster than most Atoms and it has twice as much RAM as 2 Gig laptops. I don't see why it wouldn't run the heck out of Windows 10. I would love to find out if Windows 10 could breath new life into ancient machines, I just don't want to spend the price of a new cheap laptop to find out. Many of the newest laptops are anemic in processing power.

 

[Guest]

I think the only issue they could run into using jump drives is if they choose to use low quality ones. Granted I've never bought a jump drive that didn't work out of the box, but it's a possibility I would guess. If they choose a low performing cheap jump drive that could lead to some complaints. Personally I like the idea. My software desk drawer has been getting more and more tidy over the years as I switch over to jump drives over DVD's.

 

[ohim]

I see a lot of down votes to comments that don`t hug the DVD , why do you guys live in the past ? Disks are on their way out, slowly but surly, so what`s wrong with you. Memory sticks are here to stay. Some might argue that one can get corrupted or something, well the same applies to disks, they get molds, scratches and can break, but a stick you can copy in minutes... disks you have to use a burn program and stuf... Let go of the past.

 

[therealduckofdeath]

Ohim, I think it's mostly a reaction to comments saying printing a DVD is as expensive as producing a NAND memory and transferring the data onto it. Yes, the USB edition seems to be a bit over priced, but it's always going to be more expensive than a DVD.