Windows 8 will run from live USB stick

[Steve]

http://synopsysoc.org/tousbornottous...a-flash-drive/

Nice. Shame I've been doing it for years already on Linux.

[MadduckUK]

why is it a shame?

[TheAnimus]

http://synopsysoc.org/tousbornottous...a-flash-drive/

Nice. Shame I've been doing it for years already on Linux.

I've been using DSL since erm, ages. But this is quite differen't.

For a start off it should be a lot quicker on USB3.0 with the right kind of flash! But the idea of syncronising automatically with a cloud service is quite appealling, all out of the box effortlessly!

[Steve]

My point is it might struggle to differentiate itself from what's already possible, particularly if you're delivering cloud based services like TheAnimus says... as surely the host OS doesn't matter... right

[dangel]

Really? Well I can't have a portable Win7 where I can move my settings etc seemlessly between systems - that seems quite a differentiator to me.

Whether I can do it with an OS I don't want/need doesn't change that - shame really

[Steve]

I guess my argument is... why care what OS you run if everything is in the cloud?

Guess we're moving in that direction, rather than jumping in one go.

At some point the Windows "core OS" will be some rarely-changing, lightweight thing, and everything else is pulled from t'cloud.

[dangel]

Fix bandwidth, availability and cost issues and then it'll work. Till then it's more of a dream than a reality for anything other than tiny bits of data. We're a long way off this in the UK - in fact, things are getting worse, not better, seeing as the mobile networks now cap.

This, on to other hand, looks "now useful" to someone looking to have a portable work environment without the problems of needing great connectivity to make it work. Cloud computing is a distraction from what's on offer here.

[Unique]

this is great. i don't suppose you can do it already with the download from the other week?

you have been able to run xp from a flashdrive for donkeys years, but it's a bit more hit and miss

this will let me use windows on my hackintosh netbook that has a tiny 8gb internal SSD

[Steve]

A fair point Dangel.

The other thing I'd be interested to know is how well Win 8 from USB can deal with different underlying hardware. I can see how moving from your netbook to your office desktop would be OK, but what about moving from an NVIDIA gaming rig to an ATI gaming rig?

[dangel]

A fair point Dangel.

The other thing I'd be interested to know is how well Win 8 from USB can deal with different underlying hardware. I can see how moving from your netbook to your office desktop would be OK, but what about moving from an NVIDIA gaming rig to an ATI gaming rig?

Depends on the expectation I suppose - Win 7 will generally boot on any system to a usable degree as the driver support is very good - missing drivers can be sourced from Windows Update (there's your cloud!) and once installed would presumably remain on your stick with everything else. It might cause a bit of upset for the first boot but thenafter settle down well. I'm guessing there's some specialisation in the Win 8 "to go" code to make this easier anyway but it's perfectly doable. I don't think the aim is to push gaming rig to gaming rig in that sense, moreover to have a "working" system on n sets of hardware. It's all possible though and quite interesting. I already sort of do this by bundling up my current install as a VM before I reinstall (so that I can 'boot' it if I forgot something) and a few of the drive imaging tools offer dissimilar hardware restore now.

I'd love to pack up my working environment for my home PC(s) - and even have the choice of using my main rig at home or a laptop in the garden etc etc.

[shaithis]

The other thing I'd be interested to know is how well Win 8 from USB can deal with different underlying hardware. I can see how moving from your netbook to your office desktop would be OK, but what about moving from an NVIDIA gaming rig to an ATI gaming rig?

My biggest hope for this is not the running from USB, it's the hardware detection and support when changing hardware that should become bomb-proof based off of this....but they have some work to do before it'll work, lost track of the number of Vista and 7 installs that have ended up with the 0x0000007B BSOD after swapping the motherboard........

[TheAnimus]

You know there were damned good reasons why we moved away from the mainframe, to a client server style setup.

Call it elastic computing and people seem to want to run back towards it.

I want a fully functional system even when I'm disconnected.

[Unique]

Depends on the expectation I suppose - Win 7 will generally boot on any system to a usable degree as the driver support is very good - missing drivers can be sourced from Windows Update (there's your cloud!) and once installed would presumably remain on your stick with everything else. It might cause a bit of upset for the first boot but thenafter settle down well. I'm guessing there's some specialisation in the Win 8 "to go" code to make this easier anyway but it's perfectly doable. I don't think the aim is to push gaming rig to gaming rig in that sense, moreover to have a "working" system on n sets of hardware. It's all possible though and quite interesting. I already sort of do this by bundling up my current install as a VM before I reinstall (so that I can 'boot' it if I forgot something) and a few of the drive imaging tools offer dissimilar hardware restore now.

I'd love to pack up my working environment for my home PC(s) - and even have the choice of using my main rig at home or a laptop in the garden etc etc.

that's how i'd imagine it to work. just keep all the drivers it comes across and needs and can tell what machine it's using and what drivers it needs when it boots up

btw, are you saying with win7 that for example, i could take an existing working win7 install on one pc, clone it to another HD, stick it in another pc with completely different hardware (mobo/ram/cpu/gpu/etc) and it would boot up, prompt for or download the drivers, and then work after an update and reboot or two, so if upgrading hardware i wouldn't need to start from scratch with a fresh install, then all my programs, settings etc? the most annoying, frustrating, time consuming and boring part of upgrading?

[shaithis]

^^ That's how it supposed to work. In practice it can (and does regularly) fail spectactularly!

[dangel]

^^ That's how it supposed to work. In practice it can (and does regularly) fail spectactularly!

Not as much as I expect I have to say - I've a number of times (for a laugh) rebuilt a PC with all new shizzle and been amazed 7 coped. It's certainly better at it than older versions but yes, i'm not claiming it's infallible by any means.

It's also not a good idea - you keep all the crap you used to have etc - but can be great when you've just done a rebuild and CBA to do it over. If I'm planning to do this i'd generally uninstall every third party drive in add/remove just before I shutdown for the last time on the old hardware. If anything will stuff things up it's a third party driver that's a bit iffy. I'd still eventually reinstall but, I have to say, the last time I did this i got away with it and i'll be damned if I can find anything wrong with the thing.

Generally the biggest issue is drivers for boot disks - this usually trips stuff up - but often you find that the new kit has the same underlying controller (e.g. an intel raid controller) and if that doesn't work then letting the Windows disk boot and self repairing startup a few times often gets you in anyway. We can expect robustness to improve with 8 IMHO given the work that's going on in all areas to do with boot and now, Win To Go.

We've come a long way since the utter hell that was XP in that regard.

[dangel]

A bit more info here:

http://site14.fourfiveone.com/2011/0...off-usb-drive/

Sounds like it does indeed cover the issues people are mentioning..