As noted in the tip Creating BeOS boot floppies, pt. II, I’ve finally made it possible to install BeOS onto notebook PCs directly from an external CD-ROM drive. Specifically, I’ve written a device driver for ATA PC Cards, which allows you to use an external ATAPI CD-ROM drive for BeOS installation. Just make a new installation floppy with the included driver and the rest goes in the ordinary manner, same as the Desktop installation.
The driver also allows you to run the BeOS R4.5 demo CD on notebooks from an ATAPI drive; you can examine how the devices in your notebook work (or don’t work) before purchasing and installing BeOS.
Note that the driver is still considered experimental and may not work well under some systems. Reports are welcome.