What is an ISO file?
Descriptions of ISO files and their origin are often quite technical and involved. For our purposes we only need understand that it is a special sort of 'container' or 'archive' file, much like a zip file, that can hold a great many smaller files inside. If you need more information then there is plenty to be found by searching google. For us, though, it should be enough to know that downloading one large file is often more convenient than downloading a hundred small ones. The only questions that remain, then, are where to get them and what to do with one once we have it.
Where to get ISO files?
All kinds of things are distributed using ISO files. For us, we will be dealing exclusively with OTR mp3 files that we download - either using a web browser or an ftp program - from the internet. Until recently all files uploaded to the shared folder were repackaged in ISO format and made available to download all at once through a browser. We will continue this practice but from this date onward we will be using FTP to transfer them instead of a browser. There are several advantages to working this way, most notable is the ability to resume broken downloads without the use of a download manager, and less bandwidth consumption on the main server. I have outlined the FTP details so everybody - experienced or novice - can get what they need. Please heed the md5sum notes. While it is quite probable everything will be fine without using md5sum, it is a relatively hassle free method of ensuring there are no problems with your OTR programs.
What to do with ISO files?
In the most technical sense, an ISO file is a disk image. What this means is that ISO files are designed to be burned to cd or dvd. Most cd/dvd authoring software has the capability to burn an "image to disk." All the big name programs such as Nero and Roxio can handle ISO files and most smaller programs have the feature as well. If you discover your burning software cannot burn an ISO to disk, browse search or ask on the forum to see what others are using. I'm sure there are many good programs freely available for the job. Burning to disk is a great way to back up your files so you never lose them.
A disadvantage of burning ISO files to disk is that you soon discover you have dozens, even hundreds, of disks with your programs on them. Buying disks can get costly and the disks themselves can occupy a lot of room in your home. To remedy these problems, you might like to just get a few mp3 files from each ISO and discard the rest. Well, you can do that quite easily. Since an ISO is a 'container' or 'archive' file, you just need a program that can unzip them in the same way as you would a zip file. One such freeware program that can do this is called WinRAR. You can either extract the entire contents of the ISO file to your hard drive or you can pick and choose which files you want (without extracting everything). WinRAR has an unobtrusive nag screen when the trial period expires but it's a rock solid program and it is adfree so there is very little to say against it.
A disadvantage of unzipping ISO files is that you end up using double the hard disk space because you have the files in the ISO itself, which is often hundreds of megabytes in size, and you have the mp3 files that you extract, which can also use hundreds of megabytes of space. This needn't be a concern because you can use a gizmo called a virtual drive instead of unzipping. Using a virtual drive is like telling windows to read part of your hard drive 'as if' it was actually a cd drive. The advantage is that you can then read the contents of an ISO file like a disk in a drive so that you don't need to extract anything in order to listen to it or copy select files somewhere else. There are many programs that will create a virtual drive but the one I will recommend today is a freeware utility called daemon tools, and I have written some notes to help you set up and use it here.
You can use either of the methods described above for handling ISO files, or you can use a combination of each. You can use which ever is most convenient for your purposes or what you are most comfortable with. In all cases, though, distributing and obtaining OTR through the use of ISO files is really one of the easiest ways to go.