| From: James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com> | Then you may want one of these. Both Linux & Windows versions are | available. | | http://www.eweek.com/pc-hardware/slideshows/how-intels-compute-stick-is-once-again-redefining-the-pc.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EWK_NL_WHN_20150409_STR1L1&dni=233806532&rni=22079222 There is a lot of play with formats around Atom and Win8.1 with Bing. There are lots of Chinese boxes that have beaten Intel to market. I see the reasons for these developments as: - Intel wants to defend the space that Arm has been moving into. They do this with heavy subsidies of Atom-based SOCs and processors. I think that they also do this with creating "reference platforms" that take much of the design work out of creating a system. - Microsoft wants to defend the space that Android has been moving into. Their attempt to run on Arm has been a market disaster. So they too want to ride the Atom at the low end. They do this by making Windows 8.1 free to OEMs in that space. They also do that by engineering a way for Win8.1 to fit into 1G RAM / 16G flash systems. The devil is in the details. Like - USB3 -- rare - 1G ethernet -- rare - Bluetooth 4.0 - what kind of WiFi - size of RAM and flash Few Chinese boxes intentionally support normal Linux distros. This is one place where Intel's Compute Stick is ahead. I hope that the Windows version (with more resources) can run Linux. Qualifications to earlier statements: - Intel has said that it will phase out subsidies. I forget exactly when, but it was supposed to have already started. I don't understand how they haven't been nailed by US DoJ's anti-trust guys. - "Win8.1 with Bing" is the fig-leaf cheap SKU. I think that the OEMs pay US$10 for Windows and get US$10 back for making Bing the default search engine. Current terms are not publicly known. The original statement from Microsoft had restrictions on tablet screen sizes and processor but they changed those restrictions without public announcement (as far as I know). - (my inference) to limit the damage to their cash cow, Intel's cheap Atoms for running Windows only have 32-bit UEFI even though the processors are 64-bit. As you know, Linux distros don't support this. Boo. - to limit damage to their cash cow, Intel's Atoms vary widely in how much physical RAM they will support. I'm sure that this has no technical justification. Most cheap ones only support 2G. Many of the rest stop at 4G. Some go to 64G and have ECC support!.nnn - Win8.1 with Bing can fit in 16G of flash. It does so by using the compressed restore image as a virtual disk (roughly speaking). But Windows updates are not compressed. So as they appear, the 16G has less and less space for the user's files. I infer that Microsoft tries to deal with this by only installing "important" updates (the user can change this policy -- oops). I think that this is going to end badly. See how interesting things get when the monopolies feel a threat coming on?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh@mimosa.com> wrote:

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Does anyone know how to migrate Windows?

I've successfully used Microsoft's Disk2VHD tool to create a virtual disk image from a Windows 7 partition. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx Giles Orr wrote:

Windows is very fragile about being moved. [...] I suspect that the second you boot the external version of Windows, it will write breaking changes to itself and never be usable again.

I used the virtual Win7 machine in VirtualBox a few times, but when I tried to run Windows Update it told me that the hardware had changed and I was running an unlicensed copy. It still runs, but with a nag message every so often. Technically, it is still running on the same hardware, just with an additional layer of abstraction. Oh well. I still have the orginal .VHD file, so I can fire up an old Win7 image if I ever need to check something out, but that hardly ever happens. - --Bob. Bob Jonkman <bjonkman@sobac.com> Phone: +1-519-669-0388 SOBAC Microcomputer Services http://sobac.com/sobac/ http://bob.jonkman.ca/blogs/ http://sn.jonkman.ca/bobjonkman/ Software --- Office & Business Automation --- Consulting GnuPG Fngrprnt:04F7 742B 8F54 C40A E115 26C2 B912 89B0 D2CC E5EA On 12/04/15 11:47 AM, Giles Orr wrote:

On 12 April 2015 at 00:46, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh@mimosa.com> wrote:

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I bought a cute little box (a weakness of mine): an HP Stream Mini. It comes with Win8.1 with Bing x64 on its "HDD", a 32G M.2 SSD. Note that it is x64: not one of these Atoms with a crippled 32-bit UEFI.

Fedora 21 runs fine off a live USB stick.

The SSD is a fine size for Linux, but not a fine size for Win8.1 + Linux. So I intend to evict Windows from the SSD. But I feel that I need to keep Win8.1 bootable - I paid for it (a lame reason) - I will likely need Win8.1 to do firmware updates - it might be worth playing with for some purposes

I'd like to migrate Win8.1 to a USB3 device. I just bought a 64G usb stick which might be perfect ($19.99 at NCIX this weekend). Or more likely, a 2.5" external HDD.

Does anyone know how to migrate Windows?

Googling finds lots of moderately crappy postings about how to move Windows to an SSD but I cannot tell if they assume that some vital essence is left on the original drive. (I actually wish to move the opposite way; that ought not to be a problem.)

I've found Windows quite fragile, possibly due to piracy prevention things. It also seems to want to own booting and on UEFI / Secure Boot systems this gets downright magical (i.e. I don't understand it)

All seem to take proprietary non-Microsoft software -- one fears a bait-and-switch. (I bet some of the bootable ones are based on Linux.)

I can experiment, but I thought I'd ask here first.

It's been a long time since I mucked with this (Windows 7, but several years ago), but my experience agrees with yours: Windows is very fragile about being moved. I'd suggest that if you want to attempt to boot Windows from an external media that you also make a pristine image of the original HD and set that aside. I suspect that the second you boot the external version of Windows, it will write breaking changes to itself and never be usable again. I think the only way you're going to successfully boot Windows on it again is to wipe Linux from the original drive, and re-image it from your original clean copy. I may be being overly pessimistic, but I've had very poor luck working with Windows on anything that wasn't its own original hardware after its been installed. Best of luck.

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