R.I.P. CDs

CDs and DVDs are useless. At least as it pertains to computing. It’s one of those things that is self-evident, but not entirely obvious...yet. After all, every desktop and notebook computer sold today has an optical drive built in. I believe that 2008 will be the year where that will begin to change.
The other day I was in an older colleague’s home office and was amused to see a stack of 3.5” floppy disks. These disks have the capacity to store one digital photograph and no capacity to store an mp3 file. How quaint.
Upon my return home, I saw a stack of CD-Rs and CDs on my desk. How quaint.
The fact is that CD/DVD drive in my notebook is dispensable. The only things I have used the drive for lately are: ripping CDs and installing software. Now with music and movies and software available for download, the need for an optical drive in computers is questionable. I used to burn CDs, but that was when burning CDs was an economical way to store and transfer data. Now that 500 GB hard drives are available for under $150 and flash usb drives are available for $12, CD burning is anachronistic.
Desktops will probably have optical drives pre-installed for some time, but in notebooks where space, weight and power consumption also argue against the presence of an optical drive, the DVD/CD drive may go the way of the 3.5" floppy drive. look for sleek, compact notebooks from Apple, HP and Dell with NO CD/DVD drive...

The iMac was the first mainstream computer to forgo the floppy disk drive. Fittingly, a new Apple product may be the first mainstream device to dispense with an optical drive: Apple subnotebook rumored for January 2008

$79 iPod nano

The one knock against Apple products is that they're expensive. But one of those "best-kept secrets" is that Apple's refurbished items are often a decent deal. Prices and deals vary depending on availabliltiy, but recent deals on iPods at Apple's online store are pretty good: $79 for a last-gen 2 GB nano, $99 for a 4 GB nano. iPod shuffles are on a fire sale at $39. That's pretty good, considering that a pair of Apple's earbud headphones (which come with the shuffle) cost $29 alone.... The best part is that while the goods are refurbished, they have one year warranties and are supported like-new by Apple. So if their is someone on your holiday shopping list that wants the greatest, but not necessarily the latest, check out Apple's refurbished iPods. Or you could go with a Zune.