Ship NI Developer Suite on USB keys instead of DVDs

[approximately_whatever]

NI send us the NI Developer Suite each year on DVDs all packed in a nice little NI branded dvd carry case. We are on the SSP suscription and we receive 3/years, which means I have a whole stack of them.

I suggest that NI start shipping USB keys instead. USB has several advantages:

• USBs are smaller
• USBs are more usable on devices without DVD player
• Installing with one large USB means no more DVD swapping. I can go to lunch while NI installs/updates without having to change the DVD every couple of minutes.
• USBs are reusable: when you get a new version on LabVIEW on a new USB, you can use the old one for regular usage. This also means less waste, since the USB keys are still in use after a new version ships, but the DVDs are useless.

[CMal]

It's worth noting that the new LabVIEW suites already ship on USB drives. I'm not sure if there is even an option to get them on DVD. http://www.ni.com/labview/suites/

[AristosQueue (NI)]

As I said in my earlier post:

> It could already be happening for all I know.

Apparently, it is. 🙂

[rericson]

I would prefer the USB option. My current computer does not have a DVD drive native to it and the external one is not nearly as fast as a USB drive would be. This would reduce the install time and reduce the space needed to keep all of the old DVDs in case you need to reinstall an older version.

[QFang]

as an option, allowing a customer to choose one or the other, ideally for no cost (but see below!), and choose 'both' at a cost-plus.

The drives need to be something other than the cheapest of the cheapest drives money can by though.  I don't care so much about write speeds for this use-case, but read speeds better be in the 100MB/s or above category!!

This Tom's Hardware USB 3 test article from 2013 clearly indicates that such a read speed is acheivable even on lower end devices, yet the low-low end of stick's such as the ones often bought for tradeshows etc., are woefully short of this goal, sometimes acting same or worse than an optical drive.

The Sandisk 32GByte Extreme drive by the way is easily found for less than $25 these days, and while this may be a huge price-hike over what NI pays for the current DVD's, I could easily justify that price increase to my managers if there was a paid option to pick such a high-quality drive.  . There are also (not tested by me) much cheaper drives that could claim to do the job too, for example Mushkin Enhanced atom 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model MKNUFDAM32GB which can be had for just under $13.. A large qty purchse by e.g. NI could probably land them similarly oem/NI'fied logo drives at better rates.

Obviously, anyone can copy the dvd's over to a usb drive themselves, but this doesn't fix the 'largely unattended installation' experience that we really want, and it takes up gobs of time each time a new set plunks into the mailbox.

The more I thought and wrote this comment, the more I realize that there is a very wide range of expectations for NI to content with on this issue... To somewhat simplify NI's task, I think their best bet is to offer either both, or offer subscribers a choice. Ideally the choice would have more graduations than 'dvd vs usb vs both'.. I think there needs to be a cost-plus option for a 'good usb3 drive' too. 🙂

All that is for naught if the installers are not custom built for the USB media to allow closer to 'unattended' setup, after the product selections and 1 'accept alllll these 600 licenses' pop-up.. 😉

[crossrulz]

Forgot to post this earlier, but I saw in the Alliance Partner newsletter than we will be getting the next developer suite on a USB drive.

[JÞB]

AQ noted that USB Keys are not "Read Only"  Perhaps that should spark some attention with the NI Update service!

He77, my Adobe and Windows are not exactly "Read only" either.  Even Mac is getting ito the iUpdate!  come on Mr L-M! jump in the Spam is fine!

Ship-em'

[pRoF1T]

As an admin of my companies EA agreement with NI i would love to see a USB key drive. Currently i spend a day when the new versions come out creating a network installer. Would be great if all i had to do was copy the usb key to the network folder and be done.

Version 2015.... 2 DVD's for the drivers now! man im going to lose a disc for sure 🙂

[MichaelBalzer]

We just got our developer suite thumb drive and it's a nice upgrade from a wallet of discs except for one small feature - the physical drive doesn't indicate what version of LabVIEW or the developer suite is on there!

The disc wallet and discs at least have the year printed on there (though the actual LabVIEW version would be better, but I digress). The year is printed on the little box the thumb drive comes in, but I foresee the drive and its box being separated rather easily.

Any chance future releases will include the year or version printed on the drive?

As an aside, is there any reason the thumb drive mounts as a virtual CD drive? Is that to ensure it is read only?

Edit: I take that back, there's a little 2015 printed on a sticker on the back. My bad!

[AristosQueue (NI)]

From our installer team: The USB sticks are read-only, but the reason they're mounted as virtual CD drives is so that the Autorun.exe will run immediately when they're plugged in.