On Tue, 11 Oct 2011, Keith Bachman wrote: > True. Write-protected flash drives do exist - I have a 512MB one I use > for booting up cleaning tools, for example. Put a tamper-resistant > sticker over the switch for software vendors. > > I know some AV solutions for Windows have come via USB sticks - netbooks > and similar sized machines are enough of a market without an optical > drive to make that a useful feature to have. > > I know I'd pay an extra $5 for software to come on a reusable disk, as > opposed to a single-purpose DVD. > > I only burn ISOs for old OSes (XP and the like) - or for machines that > won't accept USB boot. I think it's a great idea, but I think it might not work for a company like Microsoft that wants to exert a lot of control over what users are doing. If the flash drive is write-protected, then it isn't reusable, right? It looks like the cheapest 8GB USB flash drives are going for $8. On the other hand, I like the idea for Linux distros if it were possible to buy one, especially an updatable one. An Ubuntu live USB drive that allowed me to make some changes to the defaults and save them and add packages -- I would buy that. I would think it's possible to make such a thing but I don't want to figure it all out. I would to pay for it and have it just work. Just having it remember my preferred Gnome Terminal settings would be pretty great, as would having my own .bash* configuration and .inputrc files. Now I'm starting to think I might want to make one if I can't buy one. Mike