A World Without Hardware Drivers? Maybe.

What Would A World Without Drivers Look Like?

If Google doesn’t plan do introduce drivers into its OS, how will it supply (and receive) information to (and from) peripherals? Google introduced its “cloud printing” plans earlier this week. The plan is to replace myriad printer drivers that are designed only to work with a specific piece of hardware with a printing infrastructure that can talk to anything from anything, anywhere, anytime.

This sounds like a dream come true for Windows PC users who have valiantly battled stubborn hardware drivers for years. But what exactly is “the Cloud” Google refers to. The applications that operate in the Chrome OS are all Web apps, which means that they don’t reside on the user’s computer in the first place. Essentially, Google will take care of getting it to the right place. The trick for Google will be to identify and deliver the print job to the user’s printer. Google does battle with the printers and users just get their stuff.

Will it work? Cloud computing isn’t new, so there’s a good bet that it will. The question for users becomes one of trust. Do you trust Google with your information? If so, then carry on. If not, you’re probably not likely to be using the Chrome OS much anyway given that you’ll be accessing all of your applications and documents on the Web.

Will the cloud approach extend to everything? That remains to be seen, but there’s no reason it couldn’t. The centralized control of hardware functions would mean less overall work for the end user, but it would also mean less overall control for those in this world who support IT.

Personally, I don’t see a major shift away from Windows anytime in the near future. Businesses simply don’t operate that quickly. I do see that Software as a Service (SaaS) may play a larger role, which may mean that users will need to get much cozier with software publishers in the not-so-distant future.

Photo Credit: Jason Rogers, via Flickr

Making A Bootable USB Drive

Not All Netbooks Are Created Equal

The major issue with netbooks is that the earliest models came pre-loaded with Windows XP and an upgrade to Windows 7 would require a clean installation – a neat trick when you don’t have a CD/DVD drive from which to boot. To be fair, you can attach an external USB CD/DVD drive to a netbook and get along just fine using the standard-issue Window 7 media.

One disadvantage of this method is that the data transfer rates between the netbook and the CD/DVD drive will be slow. Upgrading or performing a clean installation on a capable netbook may take up a lot more time than you thought it might. In fairness, reading media from any external device will seem slow. The USB stick uses faster data transfer protocols so the process moves along much faster.

One last consideration: not all BIOS support booting from USB drives or other external devices. You’ll need to go into your BIOS setup to determine whether you can boot from a USB drive. Even if your BIOS does support external booting, computers aren’t always configured to look for boot sectors on devices other than the hard disk. If yours can, you’ll need to activate this setting if it’s not already activated. You may have to change more than one BIOS setting to enable this function. You normally access the BIOS settings immediately after you turn on your computer. You’ll see a direction that says something like Press F(N) to Enter Setup. (N) will be a number. Press the corresponding “F-key” to enter your computer’s BIOS setup.

Now, down to brass tacks – making a bootable USB drive. You’ll need to start out with a USB stick that has at least 4GB of space to accommodate the Windows installation media. If you can use a dedicated stick, better for you. You’ll need to wipe the stick’s contents, so if you can’t permanently commit your USB stick to the role of being bootable, you’ll have to transfer the data you have stored on it somewhere else temporarily. You’ll also need to use a computer that’s running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and have administrator privileges to make the bootable USB stick.

1. Attach your USB drive to the computer. Select Start > All programs >Accessories > right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.
2. At the command prompt, type DISKPART. (Press enter)
3. Type LIST DISK. (Press Enter) The disk number of your USB drive will be displayed. Note this.
4. Type SELECT DISK #. (Replace # with the disk number of your USB drive, noted in Step 3.)
5. Type CLEAN (Press Enter)
6. Type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY (Press Enter)
7. Type SELECT PARTITION 1 (Press Enter)
8. Type ACTIVE (Press Enter)
9. Type ASSIGN (Press Enter)
10. Type DETAIL DISK (Press Enter).
11. Type EXIT (Press Enter)

Note the drive letter of your DVD drive and the drive letter of your USB stick.

12. Type FORMAT #:/fs:fat32/q (# is the assigned drive letter for your USB stick. Press Enter)
Approve the warning that appears regarding the information on the USB stick (Press Y, press Enter.)

13. Enter a label name for your USB drive and press Enter.
14. Put your Windows 7 DVD into your DVD drive
15. Type xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f #:\

This command string assumes that d:\ is your DVD drive. If your DVD drive has a different letter, substitute it for d:\. Also substitute the drive letter for your USB drive for the # in the command string above.
Once the copying is finished, you should have a bootable USB drive loaded with Windows 7 media.

Photo Credit: Ambuj Saxena, via Flickr