Buying the wife a new laptop coming in a couple of weeks. Seems the newest ones don't have an optical drive. She uses Office 2003 for a few things and would like to have it on her new computer. Not work spending the $ for a new version of Office.Have a legal copy of Office 2003 with install key. Can I copy the disk to my external hard drive and click on an exe file to install from the external drive?

Try it. See what happens. Curious. Was an optical drive an option on the new computer?Office 2003 may not play on the new OS. Can't remember but seems I had to upgrade to Office 2010 for Windows 7.

By optical drive do you mean a DVD? I think whether you get a drive depends on the cost and size of the new computer. Might be easier just to get one so equipped.

Generally you should be able to copy the entire install disc onto a external HD (place the disc contents in a folder on the drive). Then open the folder and run the install.Same thing can be done with a USB flash drive if you have one with enough space.Alternately you can buy a external USB DVD burner drive, just plug in when you need it. Should be able to find those now days for $50-$60.Food for thought, there are freebee "office" like software available, I use Open Office 3.3 (helpful for opening those stupid "docx" files, not sure if Office 2003 supports that file type but Office 2007 and up does, and EVERYONE sends me those blasted files)..

Insert the DVD in the old computer and then share the drive. Your new computer can install from the shared drive.

2003 to 2010 is a two step process. First you upgrade to 2004 and that will upgrade to 2010. This is in website so you don't need a drive to do it.Bob

New computer has no optical drive, how to load Office 2003

wa8yxm
Explorer III
Jan 10, 2014
Just remembered something I did long time ago..... Short story:
Computer had either no optical drive or a faulty one

HOWEVER the computer was networked with other computers and one of them had a perfetly GOOD Optical drive.

Was able to set that drive so it was "Shared" on the network and then MAP it in as a "Network" place on the new drive. (MAP a network drive).

And use it "Remotely", worked great.

Now I have a USB optical drive so that problem will not (I hope) happen again.
Like2Travel
Explorer
Jan 10, 2014
Thunder Mountain wrote:
Buying the wife a new laptop coming in a couple of weeks. Seems the newest ones don't have an optical drive. She uses Office 2003 for a few things and would like to have it on her new computer. Not work spending the $ for a new version of Office.

Have a legal copy of Office 2003 with install key. Can I copy the disk to my external hard drive and click on an exe file to install from the external drive?

I have done exactly what you are trying to do. My daughter got a note book laptop with windows 7 and no optical drive. I keep several flash drives around and copied Office 2003 onto one. We then plugged it into the note book and installed it with no problems. Simple.
deltamaster
Explorer
Jan 07, 2014
My first computer was a Franklin. Sold by Sears.

It had twin 5.25 floppies and NO HARD DRIVE!

It DID come with a joystick!
shakyjay
Explorer II
Jan 07, 2014
Seems we are going down memory lane. I was in my garage attic over the weekend and realized I still have my old XT clone up there. Still runs like a champ and is complete with the keyboard. I don't think I still have the old green screen monitor but I do have the color one that I upgraded to. No optical drive though :)
strollin
Explorer
Jan 07, 2014
8088 computers were around and in use for a long time. While you may have upgraded to a 286 or 386, many others were still using 8088 systems.

Just as there were interface cards available to attach an 8-inch floppy drive to an IBM PC, there were 8-bit CD ROM controller cards.

As far as what software came on early CDs, I recall the most intriguing was the encyclopedias that came on CDs. A wealth of info was contained on that single disk, complete with videos and images. Of course, these encyclopedias were killed by the internet but when they first came out, they were a big deal. Another popular use for early CDs was to distribute "shovelware" which was a bunch of crappy little programs stuffed onto a CD.
Gdetrailer
Explorer III
Jan 06, 2014
strollin wrote:
Gdetrailer wrote:
...
8088 computers introduced by IBM as the model 5150 (AKA IBM "PC" as in Personal Computer) in late 1981 would have had 8" FLOPPY drives or 5 1/4" FLOPPY DRIVES, huge difference since floppies required the head to touch the media and CDs use LASER LIGHT (hence the term of "optical" drive)..

I never saw 8" floppies used with an IBM PC but suppose it could have been possible that some company made an interface to accommodate that type of drive. 5 1/4" floppies were most commonly used with 8088 computers but the IBM PC (and XT) also had a cassette interface built-in.

CD ROM drives were first available around 1985 so it's certainly within the realm of possiblity that someone could have used a CD ROM drive with their 8088 computer.

8" floppy drives were "available" as an external drive "option" to the Model 5150. I used to service a POS/backoffice system which used IBM Model 5150. Had an external combo box which housed 8" floppy drive, full size 5 1/4" 40 MB MFM HD and a tape backup drive. The box was the same size as the 5150 PC.

Pretty darn crude and booting it up was a time consuming adventure (you could brew a cup of coffee while it counted 64K of memory)..

By the time CD rom drives made it out that PC was completely obsoleted by several processor generations (IE 286 and 386 which would have been IBM PS/2 Model 30 White switch and newer which did not have any drive bays which would accept a internal CD rom drive (standard CD rom drive size is known as 1/2 height 5 1/4" drive size) and pretty much already scrapped.

While it "might" have been "possible" it is highly doubtful since a CD rom drive back when it came out was a rather expensive option and there would have been very few software titles available.

Not to mention at that time software was rather small footprint and often was just one or a couple of floppies to install. It wouldn't make sense to put 360K, 720K or even 1.44 mb on a PRESSED CD ROM.

The cost to press a CD was extremely high due to very poor pressing quality (rejection ratio was extremely high when CDs first came out something like 1 in ten was good enough to use), so it took a long time to make pressed CDs as a means for software distribution common place and cost effective.

I would place that as doubtful, not even plausible, time has a way of smearing our recollections to a point of extreme fuzziness. I really don't think he meant 8088 but several processor generations newer, but his point was that he has been using optical drives (CD/DVD) reliably for a LONG, LONG TIME and I would echo that myself.
Thunder_Mountai
Explorer II
Jan 06, 2014
obgraham wrote:
BACK TO OP! (not shouting, just speaking loudly!)

Just do exactly what you suggested in your original post. Copy your Office 2003 CD to any external storage medium you like: a USB thumbdrive, a portable hard drive, or an SD card.

Plug that into your new computer. Open that directory. Toward the end of a long list of files, look for <>. Click on that, and Bob's your uncle. There will be a place to enter the key during the install.

Works for me on an ASUS running Win 8.1 64bit. Ignore all this other rubbish about changing to Open Office, or switching to a newer Office or buying something else. We like our Office 2003, and we're sticking to it!

OP HERE. THANKS FOR THE GOOD ADVISE. Not shouting either. Have copied your instructions. Will do this when the new computer arrives.

I copy all my install disks to a hard drive -- you never know when you need it!
joebedford
Nomad II
Jan 06, 2014
wa8yxm wrote:
IN Fact, all the way back to my 8088 days I had an external CD drive for my computers.. All worked great.
Probably not actually.
strollin
Explorer
Jan 06, 2014
Gdetrailer wrote:
...
8088 computers introduced by IBM as the model 5150 (AKA IBM "PC" as in Personal Computer) in late 1981 would have had 8" FLOPPY drives or 5 1/4" FLOPPY DRIVES, huge difference since floppies required the head to touch the media and CDs use LASER LIGHT (hence the term of "optical" drive)..

I never saw 8" floppies used with an IBM PC but suppose it could have been possible that some company made an interface to accommodate that type of drive. 5 1/4" floppies were most commonly used with 8088 computers but the IBM PC (and XT) also had a cassette interface built-in.

CD ROM drives were first available around 1985 so it's certainly within the realm of possiblity that someone could have used a CD ROM drive with their 8088 computer.
Gdetrailer
Explorer III
Jan 06, 2014
wa8yxm wrote:
My daughter gave me her old Dell mini-10 a few years back,, You see it had gotten sick and she could not fix it "If you can get it working it's yours" Took me fifteen minutes. But that is a story already told.

It has no optical drive, but they sell an external plug in drive that works great.

IN Fact, all the way back to my 8088 days I had an external CD drive for my computers.. All worked great.

Umm.. I have been working with computers well before 8088 was ever invented, CD drives never, ever existed on when 8088 came out.

Audio CDs was not commercially available until 1982 (a joint venture by Phillips and Sony) and DATA CDs were not introduced for quite a few years after that (early 1990s?). Bought my first audio CD player in 1987 and that cost me $200.

Data CDs didn't come out until somewhere around 386 processors and those drives were read only (not burners).

8088 computers introduced by IBM as the model 5150 (AKA IBM "PC" as in Personal Computer) in late 1981 would have had 8" FLOPPY drives or 5 1/4" FLOPPY DRIVES, huge difference since floppies required the head to touch the media and CDs use LASER LIGHT (hence the term of "optical" drive)..

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