How do you put software on a netbook?

luminated

I have been thinking of getting a netbook and suddently though there is no CD/DVD drive so how do I get my software loaded on? Puzzled?

m5rcc

With a USB flash drive or via WiFi/LAN

mr_vampy

you can buy an external dvd drive to plug into the netbook.

luminated

m5rcc wrote: »

With a USB flash drive or via WiFi/LAN

Thanks for the fast reply, I must be so thick as I had a sudden panic moment. Yes I have a separate hard drive and a couple of flash drives.

luminated

mr_vampy wrote: »

you can buy an external dvd drive to plug into the netbook.

Thanks Mr V but would that be any different, or easier, to the separate hard drive or flash drive method?

mr_vampy

luminated wrote: »

Thanks Mr V but would that be any different, or easier, to the separate hard drive or flash drive method?

Just depends on how you get your software. I still buy software supplied on CD/DVD, so i use an external DVD drive to install them onto my netbook.

RussJK

There are multiple ways.

Most software these days is better downloaded (if possible), as it'll be more up to date than what's on the disc.

You can copy the files from CD directly onto a USB (e.g. Microsoft Office) or over the network.

You can use a portable DVD drive.

You can share the DVD drive over the network, and map the network drive to look like a local drive.

You can convert CDs/DVDs to .ISO image files, then use emulation software to run them on the netbook as a drive - only needed for the rare piece of software that thinks it needs to be run from a DVD drive.

alanrowell

I can't recall the last time I used a drive to install software - virtually everything I just download.

The only exception I can think of is when the OS goes wonky and you have to reinstall - but even then you generally just use the recovery partition which exists on the hard drive

blondee55

I just a flash drive.

esuhl

As above, the only time I needed to use an optical drive that was physically connected to mu netbook was to install a new OS. Technically I could've done this by making a USB stick bootable and copying the CD image onto that, but for some reason I just couldn't get it working.

For everything else, a physically attached optical drive isn't necessary. You can install from a drive on another machine shared over a network, using flash memory devices (USB sticks, SD cards, etc.), send files via email, FTP, or via a proprietary sharing utility (e.g. Dropbox) or download them from a publicly accessible web server.

GunJack

however, it's pretty difficult to burn a new cd compilation for the car without an optical drive