I'm staying in Thailand while doing a course with a UK university in psychology. My textbooks are pdf's, but the software is on a disc sent to my home address which will need to be forwarded. It contains SPSS and EPrime. I thought, why not buy them, er, 'very cheap' in Panthip. It's not really illegal as I have a license to use them, it would just save me having the physical discs sent out.

I went to look and they have SPSS, but not EPrime (which is used, I think, to design experiments). Is there any way to get these, do they work OK, on multiple computers, as my linux netbook doesn't have an optical drive, but I think I only need the software for a short period of the course, so I'd plan to find the right cybercafe to do the work in.

Why not just get someone in the UK to rip the disk to an iso and upload it to one of the myriad free file-sharing services, and send you the link?

Then you can download it here and burn a new disk. As long as you destroy it when you have finished you wont be breaking any laws.

But you won't get all the free viruses and trojans that way! Why settle for less?

But you won't get all the free viruses and trojans that way! Why settle for less?

right on!

Darrel has the best and safest idea. Use gisomount to mount the ripped ISO and install from that, else use one of the USB stick install programs to make bootable version for the install.

Because I only know my niece in UK, and she doesn't know how to do that (actually, I don't think I do either).

Because I only know my niece in UK, and she doesn't know how to do that (actually, I don't think I do either).

I can help if you wish. It could be much simpler than some posters seem to make it. First question would be: is the disc a CD or DVD? If it's a CD, I'd say it's a go for the online transfer. If it's a DVD, there will be an extra step to split the image into parts small enough to be sent, so it will add a bit to the complexity, but this still in within the reach of someone who's reasonably comfortable using computers. PM me if you want me to elaborate.

I'm not sure that my niece is reasonably comfortable, to be honest. I basically don't want to take too much of her time. Before I left UK, I knew I'd be in this situation, so I left a prestamped envelope, signature-on-delivery form etc. so she can just pop it in. I was just asking about the Panthip possibility because I'll need to decide where to have the physical disc sent to and the chance of it being lost. If I can't get this locally, then it's plan B I guess.

I'm not sure that my niece is reasonably comfortable, to be honest. I basically don't want to take too much of her time. Before I left UK, I knew I'd be in this situation, so I left a prestamped envelope, signature-on-delivery form etc. so she can just pop it in. I was just asking about the Panthip possibility because I'll need to decide where to have the physical disc sent to and the chance of it being lost. If I can't get this locally, then it's plan B I guess.

Understood. There's another way: do it yourself. Let her install Teamviewer (Google for it) on her PC @UK. After 3 or 4 clicks it will be installed and it will show a user ID and password she must pass on to you. Then you can control the screen remotely. If the said disc is in the drive you can handle all this by yourself.

Teamviewer is a blessing. I use it A LOT to support not-too-computer-literate friends.

OK, I'll look into it... but it would mean somehow ripping the disc over the internet ... could I do that?

Any disc that is available at Pantip will also be available via Torrents (where did you think they get all the software at Pantip? They don't rip it from original discs themselves)

Or maybe I'm wrong; just did a quite torrent search for "EPrime" and "E-Prime" came up with nothing; did you actually find these CDs available at pantip

Edited January 9, 201214 yr by dave111223

OK, I'll look into it... but it would mean somehow ripping the disc over the internet ... could I do that?

Of course you can. Teamviewer lets you remote control the desktop of your niece's computer just as if you were sitting in from of it (mouse movements and screen updates are slower, though). The first step would be making an .ISO (a big image file) of that disc that will have to be inserted into the drive. There are a lot of free programs you can use to do this. One that is both good and very simple to use is Imgburn (Google for it). You'd have to install it on the remote computer first (it's a few mouse clicks).

Once you have that ISO file you have to send it to you here. I recommend using the free file transfer service wetransfer.com. If the ISO file is > 2 gigabytes you'll have to split it first because no free file transfer service I know allows sending files over 2 gigs big. Hence my question about this disk being a CD (700 megs) or DVD (up to 9 gigs).

Splitting is no big deal either. Again many free programs to do this, I would suggest 7-zip that will compress is also. Then you can send every part until you have them all, reconstruct the original ISO file with 7-zip again then use any CD/DVD burning program to recreate the original disk.

This, of course, could be defeated if the original CD/DVD has some kind of nasty copy-protection on. But that's unlikely for scientific programs.

Hope this helped a bit.

We're just sorting this out now. I've put these options to her, eg. team viewer, and am waiting to see what she feels comformtable with.