Gaming Laptop Has No DVD Drive

Johnmcl7

renegadefm said:

callum5 said:

This Asus drive from amazon looks like a good choice with USB 3 support, includes two free M-Discs (good for long term data archives - rated to last 1,000 years), a year free of cloud storage and is well reviewed 
amazon.co.uk/dp/B01878ZQ8W/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_trftEbHFFD7TX

At a decent price of £26.99

That is an excellent drive and price. 
I'm still a bit puzzled why they are phased out in modern laptops though. Particularly gaming laptops.
Interesting they produce blank media to last a 1000 years when will we still have the drives to use them a 1000 years from now?

Modern PC games are almost entirely sold digitally now and although I still have a blu-ray drive on a desktop PC (remarkably difficult to find a suitable case with an optical drive bay), I can't actually remember the last time I bought a PC game on disc, it's been many many years now and even ones that look like they are discs are often just a key to unlock the download.  DVD drives simply don't offer the capacity for modern games and blu-ray drives which console use are expensive and there's little demand for them, space is at a premium inside a gaming laptop to be able to effectively cool the hot running components..  Technology is always moving on and nowadays optical discs are a legacy format and have taken their place alongside floppy discs.

Nilrem

renegadefm said:

callum5 said:

This Asus drive from amazon looks like a good choice with USB 3 support, includes two free M-Discs (good for long term data archives - rated to last 1,000 years), a year free of cloud storage and is well reviewed 
amazon.co.uk/dp/B01878ZQ8W/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_trftEbHFFD7TX

At a decent price of £26.99

That is an excellent drive and price. 
I'm still a bit puzzled why they are phased out in modern laptops though. Particularly gaming laptops.
Interesting they produce blank media to last a 1000 years when will we still have the drives to use them a 1000 years from now?

As has been said modern PC games are largely sold digitally these days, and it's not uncommon for the "game disc" if you buy a physical copy to basically be empty apart from the installer for whatever distribution platform the game is on (Steam/Uplay/Origin/Epic), and many more require large patches (often almost the size of the game) on install to bring them up to date.
From a technical point of view, as well as the size of the drive it's an energy hog to run compared to the SSD or HDD, and I cannot remember the last PC game I saw that used the optical disc for anything other than installation as the optical drives are massively slower than the internal drives. I've also noticed in the past that laptop optical drives are often far shorter lived than normal PC optical drives, or even external ones.
As for optical discs still being produced, it's because they still have a use, for cheap and easy to use backups or distribution of files you can't really beat a DVDR (especially if you don't want to send it via the internet), it's just that for distribution of games it's no longer practical/particularly useful given the size of the modern games (50gb+ is common), and the way that it takes several weeks/months to replicate and distribute games/films to retail whilst the production of a game might be ongoing until the day it launches (hence the huge patches you see on console games that are released on disc).

dan958

renegadefm said:

@forgotmyname
Thanks for that.  
It just seems odd why a gaming laptop of all things doesnt come with built in DVD rom doesnt it?  Its not even that slim so odd why its left out.
Is this the future dvd less games? 

Not at all. I haven't had a dvd drive in my tower in about 10 years, and that has plenty of room to have a drive! I'd never expect a laptop to have one anymore.

The amount of people that have PC collections (how many new games can you even get on disc anymore on PC?! Most 'physical' copies now just have steam codes inside) on disc will be so incredibly low, so the market isn't really there for disc drives in gaming laptops. You can definitely still find gaming latops that have them, you just can't assume that they will have them.

DoaM

If a game needs the DVD plugged in to be able to start ... find a hack - it almost certainly exists.

Takmon

renegadefm said:

callum5 said:

This Asus drive from amazon looks like a good choice with USB 3 support, includes two free M-Discs (good for long term data archives - rated to last 1,000 years), a year free of cloud storage and is well reviewed 
amazon.co.uk/dp/B01878ZQ8W/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_trftEbHFFD7TX

At a decent price of £26.99

That is an excellent drive and price. 
I'm still a bit puzzled why they are phased out in modern laptops though. Particularly gaming laptops.
Interesting they produce blank media to last a 1000 years when will we still have the drives to use them a 1000 years from now?

The steam store was launched in 2003 and since then digital downloads have been on the rise for PC gamers. I can't think of one person i know who games on PC who has used a physical disk in years, all the games i have on DVD/CD are not even compatible with Windows 10 and require some tinkering to get them to work because they are so old. 

Also when you look at the size of modern PC games then most won't even fit onto a DVD; the latest Call of Duty Modern Warfare would take up the space of over 30 DVD's not including the massive updates it has had recently. It must have been quite a few years ago that PC games were last being sold on DVD's in shops.

Also to get around the issue of requiring the discs go to the website "Gamecopyworld" and you will be able to download files to allow the games to launch without the discs. It is a bit legally questionable because you could use it to play games you don't own but if he has the discs then it's perfectly fine. 

iwb100

Because for well over a decade and more nobody uses physical discs for PC gaming....
And consoles are going the same way. 

DoaM

I got COD4: MW on DVD several years back. When I refreshed my laptop (fitted an SSD, moved the old HDD into a cradle slotted into the DVD place) I got a USB-SATA lead to plug in the DVD from the laptop to be able to reinstall the game. I only connect the DVD on the very rare times that I need it.

callum5

flashg67 said:

renegadefm said:

callum5 said:

This Asus drive from amazon looks like a good choice with USB 3 support, includes two free M-Discs (good for long term data archives - rated to last 1,000 years), a year free of cloud storage and is well reviewed 
amazon.co.uk/dp/B01878ZQ8W/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_trftEbHFFD7TX

At a decent price of £26.99

That is an excellent drive and price. 
I'm still a bit puzzled why they are phased out in modern laptops though. Particularly gaming laptops.
Interesting they produce blank media to last a 1000 years when will we still have the drives to use them a 1000 years from now?

Even if we have still got them, who will have kept the receipt if your great, great, great (etc) grandchildren need to claim under the 1000 year guarantee?

I’m not sure if the 1000 years is just an estimate on how long the discs will last if it doesn’t last in 800 years I don’t think they would give a replacement 

forgotmyname

Not fitted a DVD drive to my computers for about 5 years. And built for others in the past
2 years or so.
One built recently for someone was an exception and the case actually cost more for the
one with the DVD drive bay. They specified requiring a DVD drive as they play games not
on steam or that cannot be downloaded.

Steam and Rockstar Launcher stores my massive collection of games (well 5ish games)  

doraspenlow

renegadefm said:

Neil_Jones said:

But anyway, external drives are available and do exactly the same job.

True,  albeit a very cumbersome way to do things. Much more convenient when they are built in.
The way I look at it,  your paying close to a grand for a gaming laptop,  you'd expect the manufacturer to honour the customer with hundreds of pounds worth of gaming discs and install a disc drive so they can use them comfortably, and not have to carry around extra devices. 

That's just not the way things are going, though. My sons are both PC gamers and don't own a single dvd between them. My eldest recently built his own gaming PC and wouldn't have dreamed of putting a drive in there.