CNET news tells that, Microsoft is considering offering Windows 7 on a USB drive to allow Netbook owners to more easily upgrade their machines. Up to now Windows has been distributed only on DVDs or via download. However, netbooks don’t have optical drives and the Windows 7 ISO size is 2.3GB, which would take several hours to download on an average broadband connection.

It is unknown what kind of copy protection would be put on these drives, outside of the standard CD key, but it may not even matter.

Microsoft is also considering allowing Windows 7 to be a digital download, which users can then use to create bootable USB drives from the file.

Of course, installation from USB is much faster than from DVD, so such an option could end up being adopted by a larger demographic. USB drives are still more expensive than DVDs to mass manufacture, however, so we doubt Microsoft would be happy with that.

Via