USB vs DVD

[Han]

This is mostly question of curiosity... will the DVD sets that one can purchase from the museum ever be switched over to USB flash drives? I have an iMac with no optical drive, and pondered how I would install software that exists on DVDs and CDROMs.

[Matti Övermark]

I have purchased an external CD/DVD-drive that can be connected to my computer via USB 2.0. I am quite sure that a Mac can be connected as well (have done it with my Win 7 and Linux machines).

Thanks
Matti

[Han]

Hi Matti,

I appreciate the response. Unfortunately, I have frugal tendencies and was hoping to avoid having to buy another piece of electronics =)

[bhtooefr]

Nobody ever said that Apple hardware was inexpensive. (For what you get, it can be reasonable, but Apple doesn't really do cheap.)

Anyway, one thing you could do is rip the disc to an ISO (or DMG would work as well) file on another machine, and then transfer that to your iMac.

[sjthomas]

I'd bet that there are less expensive alternatives, but look here.

[Kiyoshi Akima]

Check your local library. You may be able to sit down at a public computer, slip a disc into the drive, plug a thumbdrive into the USB slot, and copy.

[Jim Horn]

If you have access to another computer with a DVD drive, as mentioned by others you can use that to transfer the files. If you already have a laptop with such capability, another approach is to connect it to you iMac and access the DVD via the network.

But with external USB DVD drives going for under US$30, it seems a worthwhile investment to allow reading and installing DVD software as well as being able to burn them for others. Of course, I'm jaded, having paid US$450 for my HP-67 in 1976 when I was earning a gross of US$6700 per year...

[David Hayden]

This may seem like a silly question, but are you certain that your iMac has no optical drive? We bought a mac book for our daughter and it was months before she realized that the tiny slit on the side was actually an optical drive.

If it really has no optical drive, then I'd suck it up and get a USB DVD drive. It doesn't have to be made by Apple.

Dave

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

Dave, the Apple people do what they say! They are doing it for several years now (think of serial interfaces, floppy disk drives). The optical drive is obsolete and Apple got rid of it in the recent desktop machine, the iMac. The macBook Air even debuted without an optical drive some years ago and by now all Macs come without (except the Pro which is end of life, at least here in Europe).

[Robert Prosperi]

If you want to send me the DVD and a USB drive, I'd be happy to copy it for you and send it back. Contact me thru this site if you would like to do so.

--bob prosperi