I was in the library and notice some kids playing Star Craft 2 on the library PC. They were running it off a flash drive. Can this be done with STO? I know the graphics won't be that good.
I take my STO insstall round with me on a portable HD and run it from that when I am at relatives houses so yes it does work.
Chances are that unless your library is very very well funded they are unlikely to have graphics cards anywhere near good enough to run the game though. You lose nothing by trying though.
I highly suggest *against* installing Star Trek Online to any removable media that is NOT mechanical.
USB Flash drives and the like are rated with a finite amount of read/writes, and this number is far lower than most people realize. With the amount of I/O that STO would be handling on flash media you could easily find youself with a dead flash drive inside of 6 months.
If you want a quick and easy portable way to carry STO with you when you're on the go, I suggest a small USB removable hard drive, preferably one small enough to draw power from the USB port itself. Also, beware that gaming on Library computers may not only violate their Terms of Use, but you very well going suffer extremely poor performance as Library machines are often budget models, some of which may still be using older USB ports. With most integrated graphics cards, STO is still playable at the lowest resolution and settings (I've played on a $100 Netbook), but USB ports on older systems are less likely to be USB 2.0, so you may very well notice extreme lag due to extremely low transfers speeds on pre-2.0 USB ports. (Low I/O bandwidth means that it takes longer to load game resources, which may cause significant 'rubber-banding' or lag even on systems with otherwise sufficient specifications.)
Prognosis: Not bloody good. All-in-all, you're better off picking up a lightweight laptop and playing with the settings turned all the way down. You may not have the best experience, but it will at least be playable and consistent.
Comments
Chances are that unless your library is very very well funded they are unlikely to have graphics cards anywhere near good enough to run the game though. You lose nothing by trying though.
USB Flash drives and the like are rated with a finite amount of read/writes, and this number is far lower than most people realize. With the amount of I/O that STO would be handling on flash media you could easily find youself with a dead flash drive inside of 6 months.
If you want a quick and easy portable way to carry STO with you when you're on the go, I suggest a small USB removable hard drive, preferably one small enough to draw power from the USB port itself. Also, beware that gaming on Library computers may not only violate their Terms of Use, but you very well going suffer extremely poor performance as Library machines are often budget models, some of which may still be using older USB ports. With most integrated graphics cards, STO is still playable at the lowest resolution and settings (I've played on a $100 Netbook), but USB ports on older systems are less likely to be USB 2.0, so you may very well notice extreme lag due to extremely low transfers speeds on pre-2.0 USB ports. (Low I/O bandwidth means that it takes longer to load game resources, which may cause significant 'rubber-banding' or lag even on systems with otherwise sufficient specifications.)
Prognosis: Not bloody good. All-in-all, you're better off picking up a lightweight laptop and playing with the settings turned all the way down. You may not have the best experience, but it will at least be playable and consistent.