Using 1,454,942 maximum size and minimum error correction QR codes in alphanumeric mode (byte mode is a lie) to store Base64-encoded binary data, you get roughly 4,687,823,124 bytes. 4.6 GB. If the cards are two-sided we get 9.2 GB.
Minimum size of Windows 11 installer image seems to be 8 GB, so it checks out!
Why Base64? QR codes can contain pure binary data, no need to use this inefficient, not-error-correcting 6-to-8 encoding.
Oh, I forgot Microsoft does not care jack shit about saving people’s computing resources. However, Windows 9x installers on floppies used custom formatting except the first bootable one, allowing them to fit nearly 2 MB of useful data per floppy.
Using 1,454,942 maximum size and minimum error correction QR codes in alphanumeric mode (byte mode is a lie) to store Base64-encoded binary data, you get roughly 4,687,823,124 bytes. 4.6 GB. If the cards are two-sided we get 9.2 GB.
Minimum size of Windows 11 installer image seems to be 8 GB, so it checks out!
Why Base64? QR codes can contain pure binary data, no need to use this inefficient, not-error-correcting 6-to-8 encoding.
Oh, I forgot Microsoft does not care jack shit about saving people’s computing resources. However, Windows 9x installers on floppies used custom formatting except the first bootable one, allowing them to fit nearly 2 MB of useful data per floppy.