Microsoft is reportedly considering offering Windows 7 on USB thumb drives to allow netbook owners to upgrade their machines.

Windows has, until now, only been distributed on DVDs or via download. However, netbooks don’t come with optical drives and downloading an operating system is a frankly painful experience.

The Windows 7 ISO weighs in at 2.3GB, which would take several hours to download on an average broadband connection and potentially do serious damage to a customer’s broadband data cap.

Consequently, the company is exploring alternative means of distributing the OS, including USB flash drives.

Microsoft UK was unavailable to comment on the speculation at the time of publication.

Windows 7 could prove an attractive option for netbook owners whose machines are plodding along with Windows Vista. PC Pro’s tests have shown that Windows 7 runs perfectly well on machines with only a single core processor and 1GB of RAM, whereas we have found Vista frustratingly slow on the same spec.

Microsoft has designed Windows 7 Starter especially for the netbook market, which doesn’t include many of the more demanding features, such as Aero Glass and Media Center.

However, we’ve installed Windows 7 Ultimate RC on several netbooks and not experienced any significant performance issues. Microsoft itself is urging customers to upgrade to the more expensive versions on the mini-laptops.

ANI