Been a bit daft. Is there any way around this?

[OrmRenewed]

Just taken delivery of DD and DS1#s new netbooks. All lovely and hunkydory but I also ordered a 3-PC copy of Office for them and for our laptop. It's on a CD and netbooks have no CD-drive . Can I load it onto a memory stick and then on to the netbook?

Help?

Do they not have word processing packages on them already? Albeit basic versions? I thought the point of netbooks was that you don't load them up with software, they're mostly for looking at the net.
They don't have the processing power for a lot of stuff, hence being cheaper. Depends which one you've got of course.

A lot of new PCs come with trial versions of Office, and you can use the code (usually stuck inside case) of the software you bought to convert it to the full version without needing the CDs. Or download from the website using the code without the CDs. (Disclaimer: not a geeky person, but recently did this with new PC and netbook and multi-user copy of Office).

OK. I'll check. But I don't think there are any pre-loaded wp packages at all.

Thankyou

Exexpat might be right about being able to download one though and use the code from the one you've bought, or you could get openoffice which is free

It may also be possible to do the memory stick thing, though I think Microsoft have anti-copying measures in place (maybe wait for someone geekier to come along and advise you on that). Or just buy an external CD/DVD drive (you can get them for about £25 I think) which plugs into a USB port - could be quite useful anyway for any future software, transferring music from CDs or being able to watch DVDs on the netbooks.

You could buy (or borrow) an external CD drive to plug into the netbook. I think they start from around £20.

External CD drive is a good idea - was planning to get one eventually.

thanks

Ha! Just checked and it has an Office trial pack loaded.

I don't think that's there's any protection on the DVD, so you should be able to copy it to a memory stick.

So try that first.

If that fails then there's still a couple of options before needing to buy an external CD.

There will be ways of sharing the DVD drive from the laptop to the netbooks.

Also you can copy the DVD as an "image" and then using software "mount" that image on the netbook so the netbook "thinks" that it's connected to a proper DVD.

Try the memory stick first, if that doesn't work come back and ask for help on the two other options.

You should be able to download a trial version of MS Office 2010 Home & Student from here and then enter the licence details from your bought version to validate it.

If it's already got Office installed then you should just need to go to the Activation Assistant (it'll be in the Office section of the start menu) then click on "Activate" and enter the key you got with the full version you bought. That worked for me with Office 2007 at least.

If that doesn't work then copying it to a memory stick will work.