I’m enjoying the Windows 7 beta – I’ve installed it on four machines so far. (That’s four more than the last beta OS I had the opportunity to install.) I’ve done two installs from DVD, one from network boot (via Windows Deployment Services), and my most recent install was my first from USB media.

My HP 2133 netbook is a great little machine. It’s small but has a keyboard that is exactly as small as it can get and still be usable. WXGA on an 8.9-inch display is tiny but perfectly readable. I even wrote most of the MSI 5.0 features in WiX using it last Thursday.

With 1GB of RAM, the 2133 runs XP just fine, so I was interested to see how well Windows 7 ran on it. I brought it into the office to do a network install but it was taking significantly longer than I had time for. (It turns out Windows 7 is popular inside Microsoft too.)

My external DVD drive wasn’t handy so I went looking for instructions on creating bootable USB installer media. I ended up here, which has instructions that were simple enough to create the image. I used a random 4GB USB flash drive, so I wasn’t expecting blazing performance.

I was surprised, however: Even on a relatively underpowered netbook, installing off USB flash media was significantly faster – and quieter! – than installing from DVD.

Green betas

Another advantage the instructions I used pointed out is that USB media is reusable. Call it eco-friendly beta testing: No more burned DVDs that need to be recycled at the end of the beta.

At the end of the installation, I have a netbook running Windows 7 beta. The beta didn’t come with drivers for the 2133′s integrated video but the Windows Vista drivers work flawlessly and are good enough to support Aero.