Anyone get the USB key for X-plane 10? I was thinking of ordering one just because Im thinking my #1 XP disk is going to take some wear and tear after a while sitting in the CD rom drive and spooling up everytime I start XP. Am I just being paranoid, or is there an advantage to getting the USB key? I just dont want to have a probelm with needing to replace a DVD down the road.Rob

Don't really think there's any need. The only time the disc is going to suffer wear and tear is when you're handling it. If its in the drive it's not really getting any wear and tear. If it bothers you, you can just create a disc image of it and save it to your hard drive so you don't need to use the disc.

Yes, create a disk image/dvd copy, the usb key is just a rip off they use so you do not have to use the most annoying copy protection devised, i.e. having to swap out disks you may really want in your drive for ones you do not.

I much prefer a simple disk check to some of the other draconian DRM measures employed today, although I would prefer no DRM at all.But really, as long as you're careful with the disc then there's really no reason it should ever have a problem. I have some games in my collection that are going on ten-years old, and the discs look and work like they're brand new.

God I couldn't imagine reinstalling Xplane...probably the most painful installs ever!

Yep, it is pretty hard to put a few DVDs in the drive and go do something else for a few.......

Yea, save the iso to disk, then there are many freeware utils which can create a virtual drive that can mount an iso and other formats. After it reads the iso, you can probably just unload the virtual drive.Bob

Daemon tools comes free with most Asus motherboards these days so check your motherboard driver disk, its probably on there. You can use Daemon tools to create an ISO image of the DVD1 disk and have it automatically mount the disk to a virtual drive at boot time. My XPX DVD1 disk hasn't been out of the tin since I installed it last year. The only thing it costs you is about 5Gb of HDD space, certainly far cheaper than the dongle.