I think the reason we haven't heard many complaints about the doing away of physical media is exactly this. As long as power users can make their own offline media, there's nothing to complain about.

Update: Before you try all of this, you may want to try using WinToFlash, a utility designed to create a bootable Windows flash drive for Windows XP/Vista/7/Server. If this works for you, you can skip ...

This FAQ will show you how to create a bootable USB drive to install Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows 8, and Windows 10. This sort of drive is especially useful for mini laptops that don't come with ...

In this hands-on video walkthrough, I’ll show you how to turn an eligible USB drive, one that you may already have laying around the house, into a handy macOS Monterey install disk. This is useful for ...