Forums >Off the Beaten Path>New Laptop Time!
Walk-Jogger
... Question for Wing: Do the external drives work if you need to boot from a CD/DVD? That's one of my hesitations with losing the integrated optical drive.
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Question for Wing: Do the external drives work if you need to boot from a CD/DVD? That's one of my hesitations with losing the integrated optical drive.
I believe that a USB optical drive can boot on most PC's, though it may depend on the Bios settings. Some PC's (Dell's, for example), you just need to hit the appropriate function key at boot-up (F11, F12?) to get to an alternate boot device menu. But I usually just convert a boot CD/DVD into a boot-able USB thumb drive, and that works on almost all most PC's. Any other media (not copy-protected) that's on a CD/DVD can just be copied onto a USB thumb drive and used that way. Optical drives are on their way out. Of course that's what we were saying about floppies in the early '90's, and I still have an occasional older professor come to me with an old floppy disk that he or she would like me to copy the data from. Not happening, sorry! Even if I still kept a functioning floppy drive, the magnetic data fades over time and after 10 years or more is generally not readable.
Retired & Loving It
Proboscis Colossus
Try one of these for your parents. Add a usb stick and they can watch all the digital files they want without DVDs. It works great.
Well now, that is pretty slick! I'll investigate it further when I get home, see if it will play back all the formats I'd need it to. No matter what laptop I get, I may grab one of those, anyway!
"God guides us on our journey, but careful with those feet." - David Lee Roth, of all people
Sorry to bump with another question...a lot of the better deals I'm finding are on TigerDirect. Can anyone speak to their return policy, and customer service in general? I've had a lot of dealings with Newegg (good) and Amazon (good), but never with TigerDirect.
#RunEveryDay
I've never had to return anything with Tiger Direct, but they are a solid business to deal with.
We've bought quite a few things through them.
Half Fanatic #9292.
Game Admin for RA Running Game 2023.
I haven't tried it on a laptop, however, I just replaced my parent's ancient computer (from when XP first came out!) and the new one has Windows 8. I wasn't huge on it in the store but I'm getting used to it. There is a way to get back to the normal looking desktop from the weird first screen. The settings are extremely weird. I still think Windows 7, which is on my laptop is better, but I can live with 8.
Sulphur Springs 50km-- Ancaster, ON-- May 28, 2022
Tally in the Valley 12 hours-- Dundas, ON -- July 30, 2022 (Support SickKids Toronto)
Stokely Creek-- 56km-- Sault Ste. Marie, ON-- Sept. 24, 2022
Ok, it's now becoming a PITA. My mom keeps wanting stuff done NOW on it, aka her old games downloaded. Good thing I'm off today...