As a proud owner of a Samsung UMPC (OK everyone else seems to go for the Netbooks I just had to be different), who also has a couple of clients that use these units for business purposes, I’ve had to come up with work arounds for a couple of issues.  They are great especially when your somewhere with very limited space and you need to get work done (ever try and open a full size laptop while sitting in coach on a plane).

     The one problem is that if you ever need to reinstall Windows, you have a issue.  As noted there are no CD drives on the unit (yes there is an option for an external cd drive but what if you don’t have one) and the unit only comes with one (or 2 depending on your version) restore cd’s (actually DVD’s). 

      For the solution to this I will turn to Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft who has written a Tip on TechNet (Article is in the free section of TechNet, so everyone should have access to this link).  The posting entitled “Tip: Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7—Even on a Netbook” speaks about Windows 7, however 2000, XP and Vista can all be installed using the exact same steps. 

     “Putting the Windows 7 installation on a USB thumb drive has a few advantages—a small USB key is much more convenient for carrying around than a DVD, the OS will actually install much faster, and you can use a USB key to install Windows 7 on systems that do not have a DVD drive, such as a netbook. In fact, you can even install Windows 7 on netbooks that have fairly modest hardware. Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft recently posted a video demonstrating how easy it is to prepare your thumb drive and use it to install Windows”

     You will find the entire posting on http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd535816.aspx (http://technet NULL.microsoft NULL.com/en-us/magazine/dd535816 NULL.aspx)