I have an Acer Aspire 1 netbook I use as a mobile workstation.

I also just bought DNS 11.5 (home) but my netbook hasn't a CD/DVD drive.

Is there any way I can load the DNS onto my machine?

1) Can I use the CD/DVD drive in my desktop (Lenovo ThinkCentre) and a USB cable?

2) Can I download DNS to a flashdrive on the ThinkCentre and upload THAT to

my netbook?

All (serious) ideas area appreciated.

Larry

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Just bought DNS 11.5 (home) and want to install it to my Acer Aspire 1 netbook - but it doesn't have a built-in CD/DVD drive nor do I have a portable to hook into a USB port.

I DO have access to a desktop (Lenovo ThinkCentre) which DOES have a CD/DVD drive.

Can I run the CD/DVD on the Lenovo and run a USB cable to my netbook to install or can I compress the DNS 11.5, store on a flashdrive and download THAT way?

Any ideas?

 

 

Larry,

#1 won't work without a lot of wrapping your leg around your neck and a special USB cable.

#2 is your best approach. However, attempting to install it on your Netbook from a USB flash drive would be exceedingly slow. If you got enough room on your hard drive, I would copy it from the flash drive to your Netbook's hard drive, then locate the setup.exe and run that.

Lastly, I would keep it on the USB flash drive just for safekeeping, in case you have to remove it from your hard drive in order to free up space, and just in case you have to uninstall and reinstall DNS. Also, keep in mind that DNS 11.5 is not going to be a speed demon on your Netbook. It's going to run slow, but it will work and there are a couple things you can do to speed it up, such as setting the Speed vs. Accuracy slider all the way to the left (i.e., Faster Response) and resetting your Windows pagefile from dynamic to fixed or static.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

If you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.
variation on Occam's Razor (Law of Parsimony)

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Thanks Chucker. If this doesn't work I may have to resurrect my old (12lb) HP Pavilion (broken hinges) and go back to Win XP.

Thanks again; Larry

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Just bought DNS 11.5 (home) and want to install it to my Acer Aspire 1 netbook - but it doesn't have a built-in CD/DVD drive nor do I have a portable to hook into a USB port.

I DO have access to a desktop (Lenovo ThinkCentre) which DOES have a CD/DVD drive.

Can I run the CD/DVD on the Lenovo and run a USB cable to my netbook to install or can I compress the DNS 11.5, store on a flashdrive and download THAT way?

Any ideas?

 

 

Larry,

You shouldn't have any particular problems requiring you to go back to an old laptop and Windows XP.

I was going to suggest what Amin with regard to getting an external DVD RW drive that you can connect to any laptop or Netbook via the USB ports. I've had one of these for years because I take it with me when I work with clients on-site because I never know whether they have a DVD or just a CD drive. It's basically plug-and-play and you can actually get them for cheaper than $35 if you look around the new ones are very slim and easily transportable the new one that I just bought for about $28 is no bigger than a CD case, and is also capable of creating LightScribe labeled CDs. Mine is actually 16x. It's a good investment.

However, I chose to suggest a USB thumb drive because you can get them anywhere, 4 GB is all you need, and the cost of one dedicated for gigabyte USB flash drive can be as low as $5 if you know where to look. There also a little more portable. There are a couple of new models out there that are no bigger than the Logitech Anywhere wireless dongle for their new keyboards and mice. I have several of these and the only problem that I have with them is that they're easy to lose because they're so tiny. These ones cost about $8, but boy are they nifty because it can string them together and put them on a keychain. Take a look around because you can find everything including a good USB DVD RW drive and these tiny, tiny USB thumb drives. I keep all of my copies of DNS as far back as DNS 9.5 on these little tiny thumb drives so that if anything happens to any of my hard drives, I'm not stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

"It takes a genius to see the obvious." -Albert Einstein

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Thanks Chucker. I already bought a 16GB thumbdrive at Walmart ($18!) but the only problem seems to be transferring DNS from the CD to it. I'm doing this through a Lenovo ThinkCentre CD/DVD drive - zipping each file as I 'copy' it to a 'Dragon' folder on the drive. Still taking hours to transfer and I have limited time on the desktop. Think I'll go the portable CD drive route.

Got any suggestions which retailers to check?

Thanks again; Larry

 

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Just bought DNS 11.5 (home) and want to install it to my Acer Aspire 1 netbook - but it doesn't have a built-in CD/DVD drive nor do I have a portable to hook into a USB port.

I DO have access to a desktop (Lenovo ThinkCentre) which DOES have a CD/DVD drive.

Can I run the CD/DVD on the Lenovo and run a USB cable to my netbook to install or can I compress the DNS 11.5, store on a flashdrive and download THAT way?

Any ideas?

 

 

Zipping each file? Do you have too much time on your hands?

Zip the whole folder incl. subfolders if you wish, but even that won't save you much time because most of the install files are packed (zipped) already. I'd just copy the whole thing if I were you.

Stephan

 

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www.egs-vertrieb.de - Speech Recognition Blog - Forum: www.immer-eine-Nuance-besser.de

Larry,

I concur with Stephan. You're wasting your time zipping up all the files. What you should be doing is copying the entirety of the contents as they are, folders and all, directly from the DVD to your external source. Stephan is absolutely correct in that you will not get any compression out of those files. At best you might get 2 or 3% if that. In addition, if you don't unzip them correctly, you won't be able to install it.

Just select everything and copy it as is and then run the setup.exe. You'll find that it copies much faster that way anyway. The total size of the files on the DVD don't exceed 2 GB, so if you got a 16 GB flash drive, you have plenty of room without zipping anything.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. - Albert Einstein

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Another option is to buy an external (USB) DVD burner like this one:  http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Writer-External-Optical-Drive/dp/B003M0NT1M/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1330265408&sr=8-4 

Probably not what you had in mind, but I recently had to go this route and was pleasantly surprised that I could get an external DVD burner for $35 (plus shipping).

Thanks Amin! I just ordered the CD/DVD burner (thru YOUR affiliate link?)

Hope this goes alright now.

Been wanting to produce some 'papers' but was waiting to use DNS to avoid so many typos. (small keyboard)

Thanks again; Larry

 

 

 

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Just bought DNS 11.5 (home) and want to install it to my Acer Aspire 1 netbook - but it doesn't have a built-in CD/DVD drive nor do I have a portable to hook into a USB port.

I DO have access to a desktop (Lenovo ThinkCentre) which DOES have a CD/DVD drive.

Can I run the CD/DVD on the Lenovo and run a USB cable to my netbook to install or can I compress the DNS 11.5, store on a flashdrive and download THAT way?

Any ideas?

 

 

I am kind of at a loss here why you don't use networking.  Presumably your netbook and your desktop and both running Windows so why don't you just copy the entire contents of your DVD onto a single folder on your desktop and then copy that folder directly to your netbook instead of wasting money on DVD drives?  The whole idea of iPads and netbooks etc these days is to do away with nonsense like DVD drives and use networking, hence the name netbook.

As for zipping what is mainly cab files which are already zipped effectively, that's another waste of time, just copy the folder directly across.

Lindsay

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

Lindsay,

Actually, there's an easier approach if Larry can network with his desktop and that would be to map his desktop hard drive so as to make it a local drive on his Netbook, and then simply run the setup.exe from there. I used to do this all the time because my laptop only had a 40 GB hard drive, so it was not possible to store all my download installation files on the system. Therefore, when I was home, I would simply map the drive were all my install files were stored and install it from there. You can also map the DVD drive as a local drive, which is even easier.

Even so, I spend enough time on the road working with clients that I don't want to show up at a clients site without all the tools that might be necessary, whether or not they are. I can think of a number of reasons why one might want a USB thumb drive or an external DVD RW drive vs. simply networking. The cost of a good external DVD RW drive is significantly less than the cost of filling up my SUV once a week, which cost me $100 +. Besides, it's a good thing to have around.

Certainly not taking issue with you at all. I just wasn't willing to assume that Larry had any understanding of how the network his two systems together, but more importantly I didn't think of it either until you brought it up. My systems are all networked to a domain name server, which is a whole other can of worms. Even so, I've used that less and less over the last couple of years unless it was an absolute emergency because I simply don't need to do that anymore. In fact, the only time I do use it is when I haven't duplicated certain files on all systems.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

"Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one." -  Chinese Proverb

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Chuck,

I think the problem is in many cases that the term networking just switches people off without a second thought, simply because going back just a few years it always seemed a fairly complicated process to set up a network and in many cases it was.

I was thinking in the simplest terms (at least in terms of setting it up) and as an example, presuming both the desktop and the netbook are running Windows 7 (not that it matters) something like the following as a basic walk-through which hopefully Larry will find useful:

1.  Create a new folder in Documents called "DNS DVD" on the desktop
2.  Copy the contents of the DVD to this folder
3.  Allow file sharing on this folder via file | Sharing (alternatively your Documents may already be a shared folder so setting this folder as shared won't be necessary)

4.  Start-up Windows Explorer on the netbook, expand Network and find the Lenovo and DNS DVD folder.

5.  Copy the DNS DVD folder to the netbook

6.  Run DNS setup from the copied folder on the netbook.

There may be various prompts along the way but the above underlines the basic principle which should be very easy.  (Famous last words)

As an example the above should be possible with most wireless routers installed in any household without any complicated setup routines.

I think having a flash drive or 2 is a definite must and at the end of the day if someone prefers to do it with a flash drive or DVD then that is up to them, however my point was simply that it is very easy to do this with networking these days.

Lindsay

 

Edit: I should explain that when I say "various prompts along the way" you may get prompted to join a Homegroup or set one up as an example.  I recommend just following the instructions as it is very easy.  The great thing is that once it is set up you can then very easily copy files between your desktop and your netbook at any time, wirelessly and without any fuss.

I should also add to make sure that both the Lenovo and the netbook are connected to the Internet at the time, meaning connected to your home wireless network/router (this would be wirelessly or via cable, most households tend to still have desktops connected to a wireless router by cable but it does not matter)

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www.pcbyvoice.com
www.pcbyvoice.co.uk

Lindsay,

I agree. For some folks just saying "network" invokes the reaction that we had in Vietnam when someone yelled "incoming".

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. - Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

 

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