[Albinoni]

I bought a optical cable for my Sony MD Player and would like some help on how to use it to transfer music from my Toshiba laptop to my Sony MD Player, both units have optical functions eg the laptop has opt out and md player has opt in.
 
Questions
 
1. Do I need software for this ?
 
2. How fast is the transfer
 
3. is there much of a diff in sound using opt and usb, which do you think is better ?
 
Thanks