X series usability without an optical drive

[ishinryu]

I was wondering if I could survive without a CD/DVD drive if I bought one of the X series ThinkPads. Assuming everything is already loaded or I have restored from the hidden partition how would I load software from CD without attaching an external CD drive? Could I do this via a wireless or firewire connection to my desktop?

[Blake]

if its your only machine, then i would get an optical drive.

i have nothing but my laptop and a power cord and im just fine. everything is stored on the network and the tower. so it works nicely. if need to install anything, i just copy it do my external hard drive

[immaculate]

i recently bought a new x40 and didn't get an external CDROM. a few days ago i had to borrow a USB 2.0 CDROM from a friend, but only because i wanted to reformat and dual boot Linux.

my plan for everything else i needed to install was either USB keychain drives and/or making ISOs and moving them over either via wifi or over the network. that worked really well.

so in short, yes, you can make it without a CD drive.

aaron

[ishinryu]

Yes I thought about the ISO image option using someting similar to Alcohol120% (or whatever it's called). It would take longer but should work right? The bios and OS know that there is connected CD ROM drive but something like Daemon Tools would mount a virtual drive or two for you.
I am tempted by the latest X40 too but it may be an overkill for me so am currently contemplating an X31 or even older.

[Txiasaeia]

I was worried about that too, but i bought a cheap wireless router and interface with my desktop - you can run CDs off the network. Works fine for me!

[taob]

I don't play games or burn optical discs on my X40, which are about the only two things I would do on my desktop system that requires a physical drive to be present. Everything else can be transferred to the X40 as files (such as installation software) or as an ISO image (which can be mounted as a virtual drive using Daemon Tools). I have a tiny 2.5" external USB2-powered 60GB drive if my interal 40GB isn't big enough. Easier to carry lots of DVD movies around than bringing the discs themselves.