In today’s world of high speed downloads, burning physical CDs or DVDs is becoming as antiquated as the floppy drive. After downloading an .iso file, I much prefer to copy the contents of the iso file to a bootable USB drive.

To access the contents of that iso file, you need a tool like Slysoft’s free Virtual CloneDrive that allows you to mount and access the .iso file as if it was a physical CD/DVD. They posted version 5.4.5.0 on Mar-6-2011.
Once installed, right click on your .iso file, click ‘Open with…’, and then select ‘Mount Files with Virtual CloneDrive’.

For instructions on creating a bootable USB drive and copying the contents of your iso file to the usb drive, see Charlie Russel’s blog post on the subject.