If you have internet access, Canonical have always provided a minimal CD installer (about 30Mb) that grabs packages over the internet. See : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD 12.04 is on there, and I haven't seen any announcement indicating 12.10 won't be. Not idea for every application (e.g. where you're installing onto multiple machines, will use a lot of bandwidth), but for 1 or 2 machines certainly an option.