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
1 comment:
While I agree with you, I think the end of the optical drive is still a while away (in tech time) even in notebooks. Probably not until the first quarter of 2009. In my opinion there are a few things that need to happen before there can by a uniform boot of the optical drive. First, the DVD format war has to be decided. Whether that means neither is successful or they become moot because bandwidth, connectivity has exceeded hard media (DVD) usefulness. Google has helped Apple in the bandwidth, connectivity respect in shaking up the wireless industry. Secondly, I think that you will see Macbook Pros going the optical-less route but certainly not your entry Macbooks, perhaps in those you will see it as an add on option. Heck, Apple makes it easy enough for you remove yours today in the MacBook. Now if there was an option to replace it with option HD or battery, wouldn't that be useful? But you still have to consider your entry market user.
I do agree that Apple may start to come out with laptops that don't have optical drives, again only on the pro line because those people tend to have more than one computer. A 13" optical-less pro notebook that IS actually lite would be a good addition to the line where the old 12" left. In this way Apple doesn't pull the plug yet as the consumer electronics industry still needs to catch up with optical-less. Apple may have planned for this over all with Apple TV but that didn't take off as well as they hoped and they just got slapped by NBC in terms of content.
With that said Apple has been known to pull the plug on useful hardware features in pushes to "advance"/future look the industry. Thanks Apple, a year after my MacBook Pro purchase I can start to find peripherals that I can actually use in my expresscard slot which are affordable...hmmm...I had perfectly good ones with pcmcia though.
Well, back to the matter at hand. Optical-less laptops are not something revolutionary, we already see the trend. Check out the Asus Eee laptop. About 2 lbs, no optical drive and costs 5 bengie's. Selling like hotcakes. If Apple even met this half way in price/weight, that would be exciting. Death of CD/DVD is coming but not just yet.
Post a Comment