You no longer need an optical drive to install Windows 7, 8.1, or 10 on a new computer. If your computer has a USB port, you can install the operating system from a USB stick. Microsoft’s own tool can be used for this, but there is also a clever free program, Rufus (https://rufus.ie/en/), which is much more versatile, handling Linux distributions and other ISO files. Of course, there are several such tools, but Rufus can even download a Windows 10 or Windows 8.1 ISO file on demand, just like the small tool offered by Microsoft, which is only available for Windows installation.
