[estreeter]

OK, this isn't another 'The CD is dead !' rant, but I cant help noticing that even the pricier laptops available now often come minus an optical drive - seems like some odd penny pinching IMO but I guess if they can save a few bucks it all adds up. It also leaves laptops with a slimmer. lighter profile - my current Acer feels like its about half the weight of the one it replaced.

Seems I'm not the only one who has noticed:

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptops-with-disc-drives

From memory, Apple started this with the Macbook Air - I think Steve made a prediction re optical drives disappearing or somesuch. Even if the majority of the population no longer feel the need to rip CDs to hard drives (audiophiles are a tiny minority of laptop users worldwide), the assumption is clearly that we all have blazingly fast, reliable internet with no download limits : kudos to those who do, but sadly that isn't all of us.

Happy to hear from those who have any thoughts either way - its entirely possible that I'm just a dinosaur who needs to move on and embrace the future, er, present !

Thanks in advance,
estreeter

 

[vadimkolchev]

I have optical drive in laptop, but I do not use it. Actually I bought laptop with one to be compatible just in case someone brings in some disk

 

[ProtegeManiac]

OK, this isn't another 'The CD is dead !' rant, but I cant help noticing that even the pricier laptops available now often come minus an optical drive - seems like some odd penny pinching IMO but I guess if they can save a few bucks it all adds up. It also leaves laptops with a slimmer. lighter profile - my current Acer feels like its about half the weight of the one it replaced.

It's less about cost and more about keeping them thin while leaving more space for battery cells without making laptops bigger...

...except some Windows laptops still have regular, rectangular batteries. On the upside, I still get M.2 for the storage drive, instead of soldered-on SSDs.

OK, this isn't another 'The CD is dead !' rant, but I cant help noticing that even the pricier laptops available now often come minus an optical drive - seems like some odd penny pinching IMO but I guess if they can save a few bucks it all adds up. It also leaves laptops with a slimmer. lighter profile - my current Acer feels like its about half the weight of the one it replaced.

Seems I'm not the only one who has noticed:

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/laptops-with-disc-drives

From memory, Apple started this with the Macbook Air - I think Steve made a prediction re optical drives disappearing or somesuch. Even if the majority of the population no longer feel the need to rip CDs to hard drives (audiophiles are a tiny minority of laptop users worldwide), the assumption is clearly that we all have blazingly fast, reliable internet with no download limits : kudos to those who do, but sadly that isn't all of us.

It's not just laptops. Since programs including operating systems can be downloaded and installed from a thumb drive, and games are downloaded from Steam then routinely updated and you update the back ups accordingly, if your main storage drive/s breaks you can just reflash from a USB drive then reinstall the programs from downloads, with even large games already archived in latest versions in your hard drives. The loss of the 5.25 drive bay allows for less obstructions for the airflow path, which can help for efficient cooling by allowing larger radiators to fit or just allow a straighter airflow path with even HDDs and SSDs getting moved away from the front except for larger ATX cases designed for those who use them for media editing/servers and not just for games.

Happy to hear from those who have any thoughts either way - its entirely possible that I'm just a dinosaur who needs to move on and embrace the future, er, present !

My desktop PC still has a DVD drive but when I build a new one I'll likely skip it so I can put a 280mm radiator out front for the graphics card (since I can just cram a large tower cooler with seven or more heatpipes over the CPU), which doesn't have the same problems of card sag and slamming against the case that aftermarket GPU air coolers have.

I won't need it in my laptop either - I've been using an 11in convertible for over a year and a half and I can make do with Spotify on it. I have FLAC files on one of my smartphones though.

And I barely rip CDs since I just buy FLAC online. For the albums I want to have a collection of the physical copies, I won't need the optical drive in my laptop nor have it installed in my computer chassis, since I don't buy them in stores. Not that my kind of music was widely available in stores here to begin with, ie, I get them in the mail, so I can't rip anywhere else but at home, no need for the optical drive in my mobile computer and I can just hook up a USB external drive to my desktop when I get a new one that can fit a larger radiator (or 3x120mm fans, if I still go with air cooling for the GPU) out front even with just a microATX tower.

 

[estreeter]

Thanks for the feedback folks. I installed this version of Ubuntu (Bionic Beaver) from a thumb drive, and that was fine, but in general I cant say I'm a fan of 1GB+ downloads. Onward and upward, as they say.

 

[theveterans]

My laptop has one and it's a BD RE too

 

[Landis]

I have an ASUS gaming branded laptop I picked up around 3 years ago and it has a BD-RE drive, but it was around that time you started to see less optical drives on laptops and even on PCs. Overall, I'm thankful to have optical because I will buy BD movies and I have TV series I like to rewatch, but honestly it's less about optical for portability and more about having a device I can bring to my cottage or friends' cottages or houses to hook up on HDMI to watch something.

Do I think optical will persist? Probably not as much, but definitely while we have movie releases on physical disc media, optical will be around. Will I miss it? No. I honestly wish they would give us tiny USB sticks or SD cards with movies on them and I hope while the cost of solid state storage drops, slipping a 10-20GB card into like a 3" x 3" reader in place of a 6" x 12" BD player will save a lot of space and make a portable experience. If you've seen an Apple TV, Rokus or any of the Android boxes, I'm all for multi-media set-top boxes like that being the standard. Eventually, it's probably going to happen and even past that, we'll someday end up on digital being the main media form.

I think we can all agree that I'm glad our laptops don't have VHS drives... Oh god I just Googled it and Toshiba made a laptop with a VHS drive.

 

[neosoul]

My laptop has an external hard drive because I still use apple & load music to itunes. i also have a thinkcenter m93 tiny which is 7" X 7" squared & it has a cd player attached. Even though Im listening to more streamed music , I still like to listen to cds from time to time.

 

[wuwhere]

My Dell has one that I use to rip CDs.