A new laptop with a new operating system to install.
Five DVDs
There are five DVDs, labelled:
- “1 – disc 1 of 2”
- “1 – disc 2 of 2”
- “2 – disc 1 of 2”
- “2 – disc 2 of 2”
- “3 – disc 1 of 1”
First question
Q: In what order will the discs be needed?
A: 1, 3, 5, 3, 4, 1, 2.
Naturally.
Second question
Q: How do you install things from DVDs to a laptop with no dvd drive?
A: Through an external drive, of course, if you have one handy.
Third question
Q: Why is it like that?
A: There’s no knowing. But…
Installation media used to keep up with the machines they were aimed at. That wasn’t always good: Microsoft Office used to come on about 25 3½" discs, which was a daunting sight. But at least there was a hole to put them into. Floppy discs gave way to CDs, then CDs to DVDs – and there it seems to have stuck.
For other uses, DVDs have been overtaken by memory sticks. You would only need one, which would save on repeated disc swapping. And instead of having to put DVDs into an external drive most people are unlikely to have, memory sticks plug directly into ubiquitous USB slots. But this rather obvious solution has been completely ignored.
This is a top of the range, rather expensive laptop (alas, not mine). But nobody seems to have thought it worth troubling with the basic user experience of switching it on for the first time.
It’s harder to break away from the past than we like to think.
This is part of a range of similarly irritating issues. I am a photographer. Many of my clients used to choose to recieve completed work on CD. Some were, and remain, nervous of e-mail attachments, web transfer and the like, but would be happy to receive work on a memory stick. Nice marketing opportunity to send them a small capacity stick (eg 1gb), branded with my logo etc.
Trouble is, you try finding small capacity sticks now. Those from my usual supplier of my branded goods are all 8gb and above. Way larger than needed.
The supliers of all kinds of portable media need to sit and take a hard look at exactly what is happening in the real world. We’re not all demanding a constant upward curve of capacity.
Tom