question about netbooks

MADad · 07-20-2009, 09:07 AM

This isn't a "college computers" question, but readers of this board are very knowledgable, so I thought I'd ask:

I've been looking at netbooks--they would be good for travel, simple tasks, etc., since our main computer is a desktop. My question is this: many of these have a decent size hard drive (160G, 320G, etc), but no CD drive. Is the only way to install software, like Word, for example, by downloading it off the net? I thought about transferring software to a flash drive first, but the heavy-duty MS copy protection would prevent that, I'm sure.

Would the other option be an external CD drive?

Thanks

aforautumn · 07-20-2009, 11:28 AM

you can just copy the files from the cd to a flash drive and run the installation from there. if worse comes to worst because of some kind of copy-protection on the disk (which is unlikely), you can make a disk image and mount it.

it doesn't complicate things too much. if you dont already have office, they do offer it for download as well, which would work.

what.cd · 07-20-2009, 11:32 AM

In addition to what aforatumn said, many netbooks come with external cd/dvd drives that connect via USB. If not, you can buy an external one and download the driver online.