are isos cd or dvd?

How big is the file you have?

its 703 meg but supposedly an iso can get bigger when burned. both progs both nero and others say the iso is too big for a cd-r

At first ISO image do not get bigger when burned. They are the raw data stored on the CD (except some low level data which is not calculated in at any point).
You should make sure that…
- you have a 700MB (80 minutes) CD, they have more than 700MB, the image will fit on them
- you burned the image as an image, and not just burned the file on CD. If you put the CD in and see only one file like "ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso" on it, you did it wrong. Check this page to CD burning instructions: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/burn-a-cd-on-windows

i give up.. 12.04 is to big, too slow, too cpu and ram intensive to load on the machine i have chosen. Ubuntu is written by people with mega machines who can afford big slow code. Programmers used to go for fast and efficient. now they dont care.
ubuntu is not an OS its a pretty gigantic gaudy toy.

Not if you use Lubuntu. It is made to be light and quick.

@doxxpu lol what you mean? Its running fine on my old laptop with 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM and it has an intel integrated card. Through i am using unity 2D session. If Ubuntu 12.04 is slow for you try Xubuntu or Lubuntu. They are very lightweight.

see 1.6ghz is fast and 1 gig ram is a lot . tried a 200mhz pent with 384 mb no go. took forever for ( 30 minutes) for live cd to boot. now trying a 900 mhz with 512mb still takes 12 minutes to boot into live cd. Also getting the unrecoverable error from the DVD note the iso is for a DVD not a cd like they say.
What is the alternate cd or install folks say works. many say the iso AS IS WONT INSTALL.
AND HOW DO YOU RUN A TERMINAL IN A WINDOW RATHER THAN THE CTRL ALT F1-6 the unity bar on left does not have a terminal. ( hate the unity bar never have what i want in it. the pull down windows had pretty much every thing you'd ever need and you didnt have to pull search pull search pull search to run something. )

argh i wish you could still run motion on ubu 9.
8 ran great and stable
9 had probs with ethernet and wifi but could fix ( after a few days sigh)
10 had unity yuck yuck yuck and install probs
11 dont know
12 has worse unity and probs installing even. sigh ( been 3 days so far and others having probs galore.
i just want a stable video surveillance box like the one i built at vcsn.org/quadvids.htm
may have to clone the drive and install it in another box. then edit the ip and motion.conf's

my first linux box ran slackware with a 40 mhz cpu and 128mb ram. red hat wouldnt work cause it wouldnt see the terminals on the serial ports. so finally settled on slackware. Ran a web server for 2 years on it that screamed. only rebooted twice in those 2 years to move the machine. THe windows pc running a web server had to be rebooted daily to keep from freezing up. linux is awesome but ubuntu is getting too 'PRETTY'

just finished the install. seems whatever the ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu is must eat up too much ram so it cant swap it out or something. figures the bells and whistles kill the install once again. am downloading the alternate to see if it will work on the old 200mhz box but still wisjh could get motion for the old 8 or 9 ubuntu. it was rock solid with out all the hassles of later ubuntu's like 9 or 10's change of not finding the res of your monitor at grub time so no good vid for x later. then not allowing x to be modded later after boot for vid modes and such.
it worked fine why do they have to keep introducing bugs by added different gadgets?