Can I install iDVD to a G4 iBook with CD-ROM from an iMac with Superdrive?

[sigamy]

All,

I just bought a G4 800Mhz iBook from the Apple Special Deals page. The iBook only has a CD-ROM. I probably should have spent the extra $100 for the combo drive and extra RAM but $749 sounded a lot cheaper than $849 at the time. Burning CDs and VCDs on the road is very cool, but I just don't do much of it. Anyway, I have an iMac with Superdrive so I can burn projects at home.

So, can I put the iBook in Firewire target mode and put iLife DVD in my iMac and just install to the iBook's HD? Will this work?

Thanks.

 

[jsw]

Before we get into that... if your iBook only has a CD-ROM, why would you want iDVD and its 1.8GB of stuff on a system that can't even read a DVD, let alone burn it? Just curious...

 

[sigamy]

You are making me want the combo drive more and more. But my thinking is this...I may want to create an iMovie project, send it to iDVD and customize the menu, etc. while on the road with the iBook. Then I can port that project over to my iMac and all that is left to do is encoding and burning.

 

[jsw]

Well, brushing aside iLife licensing issues, technically my guess is that you should be able to do this as you mentioned. Or, as an alternative, you could use Disk Utility to create an image of the iLife DVD and copy it to your iBook, then open and install it from there. Or - and this is probably the eaiest thing to do - just copy iDVD over from your iMac. Don't bother installing it. That will probably work just fine. It's the simplest thing to try.

And, while others might harp that this probably violates the EULA for iLife, I don't really think that Apple would care that you're using iDVD on your iBook to do some editing.

 

[jsw]

You are making me want the combo drive more and more.

Well, you still couldn't burn any DVDs without a SuperDrive. Of course, you could use an external DVD burner and a widely available iDVD hack to burn them, but what's the point of having an iBook if you have to carry an external drive along with it?

 

[MightyB]

Use Toast!

With Toast, you can burn "remotely".

So you can create on the iBook, then use the "burn remotely" function in iBook to use the iMac's burner.

 

[SilentPanda]

Holy convoluted ideas batman!

Just pop the iLife CD in your iMac. Plug the two machines together via firewire. Reboot the iMac holding down the "t" key. Your iMac's hard drive (and the CD Drive) will mount onto your iBook. Run the installer from the iBook's desktop from the CD that is in your iMac.