portable Windows installation?

[VirtualLarry]

Will MS ever come out with a "Portable Windows", that acts much like "Portable Apps" - they install onto a thumb drive, and you can take the entire thing with you.

This would be ideal for travelling businessmen, that might want to use a hotel computer, or something, but not the hotels software, and not have to carry their own seperate laptop with them.

This would be a wonderful addition to the Windows family.

They could still tie down the Windows license, with activation, to a specific thumbdrive, because proper thumbdrives have serial number/GUIDs. Lime Technologies' "unRAID server" does this. So it wouldn't facilitate piracy.

The flash drive could be automatically updated with a driver library when currently online with a PC, and have a hotkey upon boot, to choose to re-configure onto a new computer.

This could be a big market opportunity for Microsoft, surely there is demand for such a thing. Why won't they provide it? If anything, thumb drives get lost/stolen often, and MS could have a licensing bonanza there. People replace their thumbdrives more often than they replace their computers.

 

[lxskllr]

How many people travel without a computer of some kind? Between Linux, and portable Windows apps, I don't see much of a demand, at least not at any price point that would be interesting to MS.

 

[Nothinman]

Will MS ever come out with a "Portable Windows", that acts much like "Portable Apps" - they install onto a thumb drive, and you can take the entire thing with you.

This would be ideal for travelling businessmen, that might want to use a hotel computer, or something, but not the hotels software, and not have to carry their own seperate laptop with them.

This would be a wonderful addition to the Windows family.

They could still tie down the Windows license, with activation, to a specific thumbdrive, because proper thumbdrives have serial number/GUIDs. Lime Technologies' "unRAID server" does this. So it wouldn't facilitate piracy.

The flash drive could be automatically updated with a driver library when currently online with a PC, and have a hotkey upon boot, to choose to re-configure onto a new computer.

This could be a big market opportunity for Microsoft, surely there is demand for such a thing. Why won't they provide it? If anything, thumb drives get lost/stolen often, and MS could have a licensing bonanza there. People replace their thumbdrives more often than they replace their computers.

I doubt the opportunity is that great, most traveling business men have a smart phone, a notebook and probably an iPad now so why add a 4th device for no reason? And if I were the one running the hotel, library, etc that you were in there's no way I would let you boot whatever OS you want on your thumbdrive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

And if I were the one running the hotel, library, etc that you were in there's no way I would let you boot whatever OS you want on your thumbdrive.

Why not? The Hotel could set an ATA password on the HD already installed, such that when you booted your thumbdrive, it would not be able to access the contents on their HD.

That is, if the mobo BIOS allowed that. For some reason, most desktop mobos don't allow you to set the ATA password on your HD. I think it's some sort of conspiracy myself. I thought it used to be a standard feature in BIOSes some time ago.

 

[Dahak]

Actually windows 8 is suppose to have this ability. Call windows to go, http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-demonstrates-windows-to-go-running-windows-8-from-usb/ is the quickest link i could find.

 

[Aluvus]

Why not? The Hotel could set an ATA password on the HD already installed, such that when you booted your thumbdrive, it would not be able to access the contents on their HD.

Because the software on your thumb drive could easily include a Bit Torrent client, tools to use their computer as a staging point or proxy for an attack on some computer somewhere, etc. No sane hotel wants to be involved in any of that.

 

[tommo123]

to be fair, you could do that now. connect your own laptop or whatever to the free wifi and you're done.

 

[Nothinman]

to be fair, you could do that now. connect your own laptop or whatever to the free wifi and you're done.

Sure, you can use their Internet connection for whatever nefarious deeds you can come up with, depending on their security setup of course. But hopefully they have the wireless clients isolated from the main network and each other so any damage is limited. A cabled kiosk PC may not have those restrictions since they're probably under the assumption that you can't run random software on it and it may need access to internal servers for check in/out and such.