Microsoft has an interesting problem on the horizon in trying to persuade netbook owners to upgrade to Windows 7 when said netbook owners’ netbooks don’t have optical drives. What’s a giant software company to do?
According to CNET, “Microsoft is considering offering Windows 7 on a thumb drive” as one of a few possible solutions. I, for one, applaud the death of optical media so I like this idea almost as much as one of the other ideas: make it downloadable.
Two additional solutions: use an external optical drive (NO!) or “through a service such as Best Buy’s Geek Squad” (I’d rather die a dozen deaths).
The simplest solution would be to make it downloadable. Microsoft isn’t really all about simple, though, so we’ll see what happens. And it’ll be interesting to see if Windows 7 Starter (or whatever the netbook version ends up being called) is the only version offered for download or on a thumb drive. I’d personally prefer to download any and all versions Steam-style and have them kept safely in the cloud.
UPDATE: Done and done. It’s downloadable — problem solved.