?INSTALLING CD-ROMS

[Paula Neale <mohmie@COOP.CRN.GEN.MO.US>]

DEAR NETTERS,
I'd like your advice on installing Cd-Rom's on the hard drive.  A couple
of years ago we got our 1st MAC (yes, we are way behind many of you). It
was an LC II. We also got a CD-Rom drive and a copy of Groliers
Multimedia Encyclopedia, Version 4 and Arthur's Teacher Trouble.  All the
elementary schools in the district got the same thing, no choice.
Someone showed us how to use them by just double clicking on the ICON and
we were off and running.

Now I have two more MAC's, and I am gradually expanding the CD
collection.  Now that no one is training me, I been reading the
instructions, and most of them say to install the search software on the
hard drive.  This means the students have to go into the hard drive to
use the CD.  In the cases where I have tried both ways--doing the hard
drive installation and just opening the drive from the CD itself, I can't
really see much difference in speed.  But I usually do my testing at home
and my computer is generally faster than the ones we have at school.

I'm concerned about getting my hard drives filled up.  Also is it legal
to install the software on more than one machine if the disk will only be
used on one computer at a time.  I don't believe we are talking about the
whole cd being on the hard drive, just the search engine.

The instructions also usually say to replace QuickTime with their
version, but my newest two MAC's are newer than some of the CD's I've
bought, so that doesn't seem wise.  I did call one company and they told
me that I should drag my Quicktime to the desktop, install theirs,
restart the computer, then trash their version and put mine back in the
extension folder.  Is that what you do.

I took a class this Fall which involved mostly looking at CD's belonging
to various of our district libraries and figuring out how to use them in
the curriculum.  The teacher did not suggest the hard drive installation,
but we had a lot of trouble getting some of the programs to run.  She
said it was probably because we didn't have enough RAM in the particular
machines we were using, but I wondered if maybe following the company's
installation instructions would have helped.

Please tell me I'm making a simple thing too complicated because I don't
see how I'm going to get the teachers to use these if they have to go
through a complicated path to get to them.
Paula Neale\
mohmie@coop.crn.gen.mo.us