Originally Posted by justriiingo
the only personal use discs I've burnt are installers for Windows XP and MS Office.
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Depending upon your computer, you may unfortunately have to burn Windows install discs even when you have official discs and legitimate licenses, so that you can have certain drivers slip-streamed into the install disc for Windows to be able to recognize your hard drive(s). Some motherboards will let you install Windows off of a USB stick.
I have installed Microsoft Office dozens of times without discs - either off of USB stick, or from loading the installers from across a local network. I don't think I have ever in my life burnt myself a disc for any major application I've downloaded (things you install
after you have a working OS).
Even when I legitimately own the software, I still would rather use virtual CDs instead of my physical originals, because a full install off of a virtual CD can take 20 seconds instead of 150 seconds, and that's if you're reading off of a virtual CD on the same hard drive you're installing
to. It's 10 seconds if you're reading the virtual CD off of one hard drive and writing to another. I also never re-insert my physical originals whenever one of my PC games demands it, but I don't believe in cracking my games either, so virtual CDs solve that problem.
Someday I won't have to physically grab any of my DVD movies either (the ones I actually own). After all, an $80 drive can hold over 100 full-quality (non-'shrunken') DVD movies with all the menus and audio/subtitle options and everything, and this will only get cheaper.