Recently a brand new Dell Latitude 2100 netbook arrived on my desk. As a cost-saving measure, I opted against buying an external CD drive. Not long after I began using the netbook I found that I wanted to load some software from a CD and set out to find a way to install the software without a drive.
I came across an article titled “How to Create a Virtual CD Drive (With Windows XP)” and I found it definitely fit the bill. I was able to install the ISO software on my laptop and create an image of the CD which I then loaded on my netbook and virtually mounted using the clone drive software.
I tried to make an image of a DVD movie and then play it on the netbook. My first attempt did not work very well but I am going to take another shot at it with different DVD playing software on the netbook to see if that was the issue.
I have enjoyed having the netbook. I am able to use it for most of the tasks that I would usually use my laptop. Now, I usually leave my laptop docked at my office and take my netbook home at night. My office has a virtual private network setup and I have configured my netbook to connect to my work laptop through VPN and Remote Desktop Connection so that I can work at home as though I am sitting at my desk, although the screen is admittedly much smaller.
