Create lighter, smaller custom Windows images with nLite, vLite

NliteAfter taking a rare four-day break from the connected world, I’m ready to tackle XP on the Asus Eee PC. As I mentioned prior, some folks on the Eee User Forums have their XP footprint down to a svelte 687 MB. That’s no small feat, so I looked deeper into the methods used and came across two great freeware applications: nLite and vLite.nLine is a Windows application that allows you to completely customize your XP installation by letting you choose which components you want installed and then create a bootable .ISO image of your install. By including only what you need, you can keep that installation to a manageable size which is a premium for mobile devices with limited storage capacity. The theory here is: install what you need and skip the rest. Of course, you’ll need a valid Microsoft Windows license to use nLite, but I see this is a very practical tool. It might not get the lighter version of Windows that mobile device users want to see but it’s a small step in the right direction. Vista users will want to check out vLite, a work-in-progress version that’s meant for Vista installations. One feature I like right off the bat: the app shows dependencies between features you might plan to remove.

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