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Whither the Portable Optical Drive?
"The MacBook Air and the Ultrabook come without a piece of hardware that's been a mainstay in laptops for a long time — the optical drive," says a piece at CNET. "Maybe because they really aren't that necessary anymore." I would have thought otherwise a few years ago, but traveling in the meantime with a small netbook was certainly handy. Since that machine died, I think I've used the optical drive in its low-end laptop successor a grand total of once, which was to test its wireless compatibility with a Live CD Linux distro.
There are a lot of situations in which people need to use optical drives on laptops. The uses range from gaming to application installs, to backup.
Only having to use your portable with alive cd to 'test wireless compatibility' tells me that you are a sysadmin, or another i.t. professional. chances are high that you rarely do what normal people do with that portable but work. let me break the news about common people to you - people still move data on cds.
Read radical news here
I just installed my last os via USB. It was much faster than via optical drive. (speed depends on quality of USB drive)
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
How do you get software on a laptop without an optical drive?
Most of that stuff is still sold on cd/dvd...
You filthy pirates are downloading it right... We need more laws!
Gaming in markets with broadband? Steam. Application installs in markets with broadband? Mac App Store, Ubuntu Software Center (which has paid repos now) or whatever Windows has. Moving data from one PC to another? USB flash drives. On-site backup? External hard drives, especially if your data is over the 4.something GB limit for DVD-R or DVD+R media.
But this still leaves several uses for optical discs: 1. operating system installations, 2. application installations in places that can't get DSL, FTTH, or cable Internet, 3. burning music CDs for people who don't already own and use a suitable PMP, or 4. burning DVDs for the large number of people who own a DVD player that happens not to have a USB input and don't already have a home theater PC. I admit most of these can be done on a USB burner kept at home, and that's what I use with my 10" Dell.
Optical drives should be external. They cost $30.
For that price, you could throw one in your laptop bag, and plug it in when you need it.
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=420&name=External-CD-DVD-Blu-Ray-Drives
I don't believe in built-in optical drives; I use them rarely. They're useless dead weight. Much prefer that the space they took, be replaced by more battery... which is always useful. Or leave both off and make the laptop lighter and slimmer.
Handbrake it to MP4 before I leave. And more likely than not, copy it over to a tablet that's easier to hold and watch in cattle class than breaking out a full blown laptop.
Why would I want to waste battery spinning a DVD around?
This
How do you get software on a laptop without an optical drive?
By going home, pulling out your external USB burner, plugging it into the side of your laptop, installing the software, and unplugging the burner.
Yeah, optical drive is useless for me. I hardly ever use the optical drive on my desktop, let alone on my laptop. Optical drives are useless for professionals who know what they are doing, but for computer novices optical drives are still a necessity. If you ever buy a game or an application it comes on an optical media. You even need to have it in the drive to use the software.
:)
For now, it is cheaper to ship software on optical media instead of some kind of read-only usb drive. There are huge benefits to that though, first of all, a microsd card takes up much less space and weighs a lot less than a dvd. So, maybe one day we will see software that comes on usb drives instead of dvd. That day will mark the death of the optical media, except perhaps for long term archival, stuff i never want to see again but can't get myself to delete i burn on a dvd and throw the dvd into the basement.
Netbooks and ultraportables don't have optical drives? What's next, cellphones without mechanical number pads? How do people come up with this stuff?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
. . . along with
* an external hard drive
* empower + ac adapter, with anything-to-anything plug adapter
* 5 port netgear switch
* a few cables
* gaffer tape
* leatherman
* cable ties
Hell, with all that stuff, MacGyver could build an atomic powered laser . . .
And after a particularly problematic experience in Gaza, I've added a tiny USB keyboard to the list.
Hmmm . . . I must have missed that episode . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
My first "netbook" without an optical drive was a Sony Vaio Picturebook - like this one: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press_Archive/199809/98-085/index.html. I used it happily on the road until about 2003, when I upgraded to a Victor Interlink - like this one: http://www.kemplar.com/jvc_741.php.
Both still work, and the Victor with Linux still puts most netbooks to shame.
Uses for Optical Drives:
1. Ripping CDs to Itunes, whatever you use (Rhythmbox, Amarok) to manage your MP3s. A lot of people still buy CDs, or have some to rip.
2. Recording LPs to HD, burning CDs to play in stereos, etc. A lot of folks still have stereos they'd like to use.
3. Watching Netflix / Redbox DVDs, not everyone wants to watch em on a big screen. Or rip the DVD (takes a long time). Sometimes you just want to watch it and be done.
4. Guaranteed boot unlike sometimes iffy USB Flash drives.
5. Archival backup, cheap and easy. Great for weblogs, code base, important docs etc.
6. Commercial software, upgrades, etc. This is particularly true for naive users who tend to delete stuff they should not (like their download, say). Non technical users know to save the install CD/package, they'll often delete the download.
7. Burning Library Audiobooks to CDs, and then ripping them via Itunes, RubyRipper, Soundjuicer whatever. This is good for a number of reasons -- a lot of non-technical folks have CD players they like to use to listen to audio books and don't have or want to use MP3 players, burning the CDs also allows you to rip them to MP3s without time-limits etc. You can do this with both the Overdrive Media downloads, and the regular CD audio books (just copy the CDs).
I love having an optical drive, I consider it mandatory for any serious computer not optimized for light-weight. Netbooks have their place, but for anything serious and regular use I want that optical drive. I use it all the time.
1) Reading documentation manuals that come with hardware (like printers) on CD format
Virtually all of which are available online, usually as newer revisions with errata included. Indeed, the CD that ships with the hardware is usually the last place I check for PDF documentation, as there is virtually always more up-to-date documentation online
.
2) Listening to CD's
Are you the one person who doesn't have some sort of portable music player, or who hasn't ripped all their music CDs to a more portable AAC/MP3/FLAC/ALAC format? For playback on a laptop, any time you need to be running off battery playing back a file off your hard drive is going to consume significantly less power than doing the same off spinning physical media.
3) Watching some DVD's
Again, having these files stored on the hard drive is more efficient for a portable device. And there are a number of legal solutions for renting, downloading, and streaming movies available online that doesn't rely on physical media.
4) Occasionally rescue CD's come in handy when a root password is forgotten.
Since the article (and your post) specifically mentions Apple, in their case all modern Apple systems are perfectly capable of booting from USB or Firewire. I do understand that in the PC world booting from removable USB keys can be really hit-or-miss, but in the Apple world this isn't a concern. Booting from USB is faster, and requires less dedicated hardware in your portable system that you wind up having to carry around the other 99.99% of the time when you're not trying to recover from a forgotten root password.
I've already made the decision that I don't need to carry around an optical drive that I use <1% of the time in my next laptop. An external drive or drive sharing across the network to a dedicated system will be more than sufficient in the event I need to move data to or from optical disc.
Yaz
I really think that Android needs to support external DVD drives and watching DVD movies. Yes I know downloaded videos are the future, but during this transition time when lots of people have both physical DVDs and downloaded videos, it would definitely help ease the transition.
Mac OS X Lion now installs from the Internet into completely blank hard disks (yes, even if the recovery partition is wiped or the original disk replaced), if necessary. No installation media required.
If you travel with a high resolution camera you are going to want an optical drive to back up you photos.
A little 500 GB 2.5" USB hard drive is ten times faster, ten times more reliable, and cheaper.
Chicken, meet egg.
Yes but TFA is specifically talking about new machines like netbooks. i have to say that I too thought I would need one when i switched to a netbook, even bought an external USB case for the DVD burner that was in my old laptop....and I've never plugged it in past testing that it worked.
Once I picked up a 16Gb flash drive I've found I don't hardly need DVDs anymore. for my older games there are disc images and Alcohol 52% and for newer there is Steam. Frankly the ONLY ones who haven't joined the new way of doing things is the damned MPAA who won't simply sell you an AVI file, nope you got to have a DVD burner to rip it and transcode it. Is it any wonder TPB is so popular?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Just get a USB optical drive. They use two USB ports to legitimately get enough power, although you can usually just use one plug. They're basically just a laptop optical drive in a box and work just fine for almost everything, even installing an OS from scratch usually works. And you don't need to have it inside the computer for the 99% of the time you don't need it.
I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. If you're travelling with a high resolution camera the LAST thing you want is to backup to optical drive. You're typical CF card is 16 or 32 GB, many people travel with multiple cards.
So am I going to go home at the end of each day of my holiday and sit down for an hour or two and burn 8 or 16 DVDs? Hell no. Not when I can just plug in my usb HDD to the laptop click copy and then disappear downstairs for a meal instead.
My last holiday generated 400MB of images. My USB harddisk is thinner than 5 DVDs, It's lighter than 15 DVDs, There's no way I'm going to be dragging 100 of the things on my holiday. Not to mention that it is far less likely to cause problems by some customs agent wondering what I'm doing returning from Thailand with what looks like 100 bootlegged movies.
Sorry. Your "external USB burner" is still an optical drive.
I am aware of that. Though one still needs to use an optical drive with a laptop, one rarely needs to carry an optical drive with a laptop.
I'm on a 600 MB/day limit on my home ISP. I just recently built a new computer for my wife. The GPU came with a free copy of a game. Based on our normal usage patterns, I'll have it downloaded from Steam sometime in the next six months using the leftover bits at the end of the day.
Central Virginia.
I try not to buy things that don't come on disk. Old habits die hard, but I can't keep myself from thinking about wanting to play some game 10 or 20 years from now, and wishing the company that made it hadn't gone under for whatever reason.
I still play Diablo, Diablo II, StarCraft (and the Broodwars expansion), Quake2, Quake3Arena, and many other "old" games... and I have multiple disks of a couple of them, for retro-gaming LAN parties. I won't buy StarCraft II because I can't be sure it will work next week, next year, or a decade from now - who's to say Blizzard will still be around (and won't have deactivated the activation server)?
Installation from physical media, without a requirement for an internet connection at any step of the process... it makes me happy to know that I can play these 10 and 15 year old games without worrying about whether the companies that produced them will go under.
As another example, how will we (legally) install Windows, when Microsoft shuts down the activation server for the unsupported version?
There's still nothing "wrong" with XP, despite the Vista/Win7/Win8 hype.
I have a huge collection of DVD/VHS movies, despite having digital versions of almost all of them (I'm still in the process of format-shifting them). Physical media says I never have to contact an "activation server" to "acquire and authenticate" media that I already paid for, even if my home file server dies in a fire, flood, or other major disaster (yes, many of my physical copies of my movies are stored offsite).
Another (possibly irrelevant) example: I have iso images of Linux operating systems dating all the way back to 1996, "just in case". I also have images of my Windows install media through the years. Yeah, I collect some weird data. I've just gotten into the habit, over the years, of making backups of everything.
My point is that physical media, unencumbered by DRM, means that the content of that media is accessible in most cases, years or even decades later.
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