No CD/DVD drives on newer laptops?

securityguy

Jivesinger wrote: »

It depends what you want to do with them. If you want to transfer data or backup some photos, burning a DVD is still cheaper than buying a USB stick, and also easier to label and store. For me, burning a CD is also the best way to play music in my (older) car.

In both cases, that's an argument for owning a DVD drive to plug in when you need it, not to carry around all the time.

My laptop of choice fifteen years ago (and I still own, for various tedious reasons, a dozen of them, which I don't have the heart to throw away) was the Fujitsu B110 or B112. It's about the size of an A5 (note, half A4) notebook, and I took one with me everywhere. It had an external CD drive, which (this being the 1990s) connected via a PCMCIA adapter. It was brilliant: a laptop I could fit in a small bag which weighed about a kilo, and a CD drive I could connect when I needed it to install software back at base.

I've never carried a laptop with a CD drive, in over fifteen years of them being my main computing device. When the B110s became impractical I switched to a Fujitsu P series which allowed me to remove the DVD drive and replace it with either a second battery (yay! enough power to cross the Atlantic!) or a blanking plate (yay! lighter!) or a second hard drive (I never bothered). Then I switched to Dell Mini 9 and Mini 10s, and finally a Macbook Air. I can't think of any occasion when I thought to myself "yes, having a CD drive would be worth the effort of carrying it every day".

securityguy

By the way, for owners of older iMacs...

You can replace the DVD drive in your iMac with a 1TB laptop hard drive (for 2007 models you need a weird adapter to allow you to put a SATA laptop drive into a PATA bay, otherwise you just need an adapter to put a SATA drive into a SATA bay) and then replace the hard drive with a 128GB SSD (you need a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter, cost about five quid). The whole job cost me about £120, parts plus paying someone else to do the case opening. You can then run the pair of drives as a Fusion drive, as sold on the latest and most expensive Macs, and get amazing performance to extend the life of your old machine. My 2007 iMac is, for £120, running Yosemite as fast, or faster, than a much more recent Air.

Sharon87

I reckon most of the newer laptops don't have an optical drive as they are going for the laptop/tablet market now.

I've just recently bought a laptop with a DVD drive in. I do have an external Bluray Drive (as my old laptop's optical drive broke), but I do prefer having an already installed DVD drive, as I tend to watch TV/films in my bed and having an external drive makes it more annoying.

securityguy

"I do prefer having an already installed DVD drive, as I tend to watch TV/films in my bed"

Meanwhile, everyone under forty is using Netflix.

Sharon87

securityguy wrote: »

"I do prefer having an already installed DVD drive, as I tend to watch TV/films in my bed"

Meanwhile, everyone under forty is using Netflix.

I am under 40 by over a decade. I also watch Netflix, but it doesn't have an endless supply of films, or even the latest series of a TV show, where DVDs have been released.

Gloomendoom

I use the optical drive on my laptop fairly frequently. Ripping CDs and watching DVDs mainly.

It's not everyday though.

Laz123

Uxb wrote: »

Well, you know how it is..some people just love to moan and sadly the internet now gives them a forum to express their moans in public while in previous generations the would be sat in a corner of a pub spouting a load of rubbish and ignored by everyone.

I can remember when bank cards and ATM with PIN's came in and we had the same predictions of armageddon and chaos then with letters of outrage to the papers.

Kettle, calling black, pot...

googler

securityguy wrote: »

Meanwhile, everyone under forty is using Netflix.

I'm over 40, and most of what I want to watch isn't on Netflix. It has it's uses, but it's by no means fully populated with every film or TV series that ever was .....

Wig

Or, having bought your DVD which is not available on netflix, you could transfer the film to a USB stick to watch on your laptop which has no optical drive fitted. But this requires more work than just buying the DVD and sticking it into the laptop to watch.

[Deleted User]

hop3y wrote: »

I use one of these.

Similar to what I use.

My laptop is a 10.1" model, bought specifically for taking away on trips.

Being so small (just 10.5" X 7.25"), it doesn't come with a built in DVD Drive, so I use the USB one instead.

Cost me £25, a few years ago.