cool. So do we know if the flasher app works using this Wubi? VMWare and Qemu would not work for me because of the lack of proper USB support.

Huh? VMWare Fusion on Mac supports USB just fine, and VMWare Player does too, AFAIK. (I'm using Windows XP under VMWare to do embedded systems development and let me tell you, those applications are picky about hardware...)

Earlier versions of VMWare only supported USB 1, but the current version supports USB 2 just fine.

You do have to be careful though that you aren't running an old virtual machine: virtual machines built for VMWare 5.x won't support usb 2 even if run with a version of VMWare which does support it.
The free VMWare Player will play the old vm formats but it cannot convert them to the newer format.

VMWare workstation 5.5, at least for Linux, supports USB 2 just fine.

R.
==

Wubi is not a "real" dual boot... It just creates an option during Windows startup -- Wubi os ONLY an installed app that can be uninstalled and reinstalled as much as you'd like (and does nothing to your hard drive).

It runs as fast as a dedicated Ubuntu Linux machine (and much faster than VMWare) and it's been very stable for me for months.

And, yes, the Tablet Flasher app works under Wubi.

-T.

Talk about a timely thread! Thanks for posting this. I am just so sick and tired of Vista and the Microsoft mindset.

Hardly a day goes by but Vista informs me that a system file has been modified and then it shuts me out of my computer. So far, a reboot sorts the issue but I feel that it is only a matter of time before I am locked out permanently. This is just outrageous, but then I am sure many reading this will know what I mean.

I have spent the past few weeks trying out Linux Live CD’s, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandrive, SuSE and the like. At the moment I am daunted by the prospect of partitioning and dual booting – a process I know from experience to be fraught with potential for problems.

Wubi could be the interim solution I need in getting me up and running with Linux while keeping access to Windows apps until such time as I have investigated the Linux alternatives. Reading the Wubi faq’s, you can use LVPM to move the virtual file to a dedicated partition whenever you wish so I can take my time over that.

I shall get stuck in this evening.

Thanks again for what I know is not strictly an IT matter but just so useful in the broader scheme of things Linux.

Thanks for the tip Tim, it's fun playing with this -- and beats having to hunt down my unlabeled Knoppix CD next time I need to reflash :-)