This past January (2009) I picked up a TeX Live DVD at the Joint Math Meetings. This December I finally tried installing it on my netbook, which of course doesn't have a DVD drive. My solution was to copy it off of the DVD to an external hard drive, and use that.<br>
<br>The machine for copying runs Windows XP.<br><br>Every attempt to install TeX Live from the external hard drive to the netbook failed, despite following all the documentation available, supplemented by significant web searching.<br>
<br>Finally I found a 12-hour block of time in which the 2009 version of TeX Live could be downloaded (it actually took 11), and it worked perfectly the first time.<br><br>My working hypothesis for the failure of the 2007 distribution is that the XP machine didn't include the Rock Ridge data in the copying process, though I'm afraid I do not know how I could confirm this. If this is the case, perhaps an explicit warning to this effect in the documentation is warranted.<br>
<br>Thank you.<br>