Lol to the people who say they need an optical drive on a gaming laptop....

Folks, is it just me or have I completely outgrown this technology??? I have owned two Razer Blade laptops, 1 sager over the past 1.5 years none of which had an optical drive included. I can honestly say I have not missed my optical drive even once..... I have a portable usb DVD/Bluray drive and I have used it may 4 times over the past 1.5 years.....

I was even looking at building a Sager NP-9370... and I opted for the additional hard drive instead of the stock Bluray drive option.


Is anyone else like me ?? Does anyone else feel that optical drives are going the way of the floppy drive?

 

I havent been using one for a year now either, just dont need it. rather have the awesome SSD&HDD combo. Some people like to use it though, especially if the laptop acts as a desktop replacement

 

It's still relevant for bluray imho. But for mass storage it's not that reliable and it's slow. But it's still more relevant than the floppy because amount of storage is still significant.

Sent from my YP-G70 using Tapatalk 2

 

I forgot i had mine, lol...not long ago a friend of mine told me to burn him something on DVD, i was like : man don't you have a flash drive?

Didn't used it more than a year...

 

Count me in on the other side of the fence; I use my optical drive quite frequently. Important docs/pictures are backed up and stored in a safe. My car has a 6 disc cd changer buy no auxillary input, so im making new cds. I occasionally rent blurays/dvds. I also still have some old games and such I install from their cd as well. I also live in an area prone to hurricanes and floods, so the fact that discs are waterproof is another plus for me.

 

I can give you a scenario where an optical drive is nice to have:

300kb/s internet line, 10GB game you want to install and play.

Download from Steam: 30 000 seconds/500 minutes/8 hours (2.6 hours with 1MB/s line)
Installation from game disk: 10-30 minutes

 

Not really, i have 20mbps and it's fairly good download speed.
When i download games/movies/music i store them to one of the external hard drives.

Easy, simple and no dvd's all around the house.

 

Uhhhh, 20mbps is a LOT faster than 300kbps...?

 

I gave you a reason why I think its nice to have an optical drive. There are maaaany people that doesn`t have a 20mbps internet connection, but around 3mbps. For those, downloading games above 5GB is a huge pain in the behind.

As for storing games in a HDD, I can see the comfort of doing that, but there are people who also like to own a physical copy of a software or game (or movie or music album). Not just for the enjoyment of seeing the cover of the game, but also not having to be scared that someone will delete your games/software from the HDD, or you by mistake, or the HDD get a failure sometime in the future, taking your collection with its death.

 

My argument is not that we NEVER need optical drives anymore. My argument is when it comes to gaming laptops your better off forgoing the internal optical drive in replacement for more storage. Using an extra optical drive for the RARE times you need it works perfectly fine. I have been doing this years without issue.

P.S my laptop is always my main machine, I have no desktop just a 27 inch screen I hook up to when I am sitting at my desk.

 

Except the title of your post is ridiculing people that want optical drives on their gaming laptops.

I don't understand people who think their particular use case applies to absolutely everyone.

 

I am not implying that what so ever..... I am just stating my opinion.

The reason it's "LOL" is it's the same as people using dial-up, floppy drives, renting DVD, etc. It represents people who are not on-trend with technology. This is meant as no offense what so ever, as some people for example live in remote locations where broadband speeds are not possible... and there are specific examples but for the most part no physical media is going the way of the dinosaur.



My point is this is nothing to get offended about, I just always laugh when i see articles or posts about people complaining about internal optical drives.

 

I don't use it much, mostly when watching a movie and that's it. I have a symmetrical 200Mb/s connection and that's enough so far for gaming and everything else.

 

..then again, if you don't own a few games that are unavailable on the internet - are you really a gamer?

 

There is nothing unavailable on the internet.

 

I thought that was gonna be a problem when I bought this laptop, luckily I haven't had the need of an optical drive yet.. not even once in the 6 months I have had this laptop.

If my laptop had an optical drive I would definitely replace that with another HDD, I love having lots of storage

 

Well, I mean, if you want to get technical, you are implying that. I think, really, that there was absolutely no actual reason for this thread to exist.

 

As a mod on a filesharing board and sometimes a releaser -- oh, yes, lots of stuff you can't download

It's like old classic books. That fail to be read by the people who would be fanatical enough to preach about them. But also too fanatical to enjoy reading them. Those kinds of books disappear on attics, and no one knows about it. Or care, for all we know.

 

I'm a sucker for Redbox... fifty cent blu ray movie rentals save a pile of cash on date night for food and drinks Long live the optical drive!

 

Not to mention that you can't beat Blu-Ray for the fidelity. Even after ripping movies, I go to an actual Blu-Ray and it's so crisp and clean and clear.

 

optical bay slot is useful for 2nd HDD caddies and Lenovo is using 2nd GPU in there. As about optical drive... I believe OEMs should sell notebooks with USB 2.0 ODD.

 

The last time I used my optical drive was installing Diablo 3 then I discovered I could download it directly from the website. Live and learn I suppose

 

It can be a bit odd sometimes. I've got games and music on disc simply because they were cheaper than downloading. I have put in the disc, and the entire game is promptly downloaded online. Makes you wonder why they bothered selling the disc to start with, but hell, it if it costs less, I'm not complaining.

 

My response?

LOL to the people who who say they needed to throw away cash at Razer on a gaming laptop.

Well aren't you high and mighty with your privileged life. Yes, let's point fingers and laugh at those who don't have 20mb/s lines. Those fools who install games from DVDs! Mmm, feels good doesn't it?

 

Over the past couple of years, I have rarely used my optical drives, but for some games such as battlefield 3, installing the base 20Gb game from the dvds rather than downloading it was quite a time saver. This laptop has a Blu Ray drive, but for some reason I just can't see myself renting or buying a blue ray movie just because products such as Netflix exist.

 

I use my optical drive very often actually, I back everything up to disks. I know I can go buy an external drive but I don't necessarily have ~$80 to spend when I need to back stuff up, plus I can buy disks for fairly cheap in bulk. Plus it doesn't help when you have ~20TB of storage of files, music, games, and movies; with the files dating back to the days of MS-DOS (I've had to go from floppy to cd, cd to dvd, hopefully going to br soon) and files from DOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix. Personal files, and business files. I have a ton of dev stuff on disks, and every day it grows.
I know this is meant for "gamers" but I game A LOT, but I also use my laptop for a lot more then just your average gaming. Whenever you actually start using your "gaming" machine as an actual computer, you'd understand the need for optical drives. The only reason why it's a "gaming" laptop is because of your gpu, you don't use the cpu to it's full potential.
My laptop actually has a drive bay that can have an optical drive, storage caddy, or a 750m sli card. So really to me it doesn't matter, when I need to game I'll use sli, for work the optical drive, and for mass storage the HDD caddy.
Plus for whoever said their 20mb/s internet is fast, try being on 1gb/s down and up.

 

Was that your response or scream for help? Do you have problems? Complexes?

I have 370KB/sec internet line and I have never used optical drive for 3 years ahead. Seriously. I mean maybe found old CDs and checked what they have and that was so long time ago that i have already forgotten.

 

I thought the lack of optical drive would be inconvenient when I purchased an hp envy 15 a few years back, but I was willing to make the trade-off for a thinner form factor. I soon realized I had no need of this device.

 

I didn't think to unsult/laugh or point fingers to anyone. That 20mb/s is only 18€ a month here in Serbia (yes we kinda have cheap internet).

I really don't understand point of your comment...

 

The point is that 20mbps is literally unavailable in some places. You have cheap internet because your country is very tiny. Here in the US, we have large swaths of rural territory where good broadband access is completely missing.

 

Just copy the BF3 folder to an external hard drive and then copy back if you want to install it again. But as far as video, depends on how much of a videophile you are. The difference between streaming "HD" video and Blu-Ray is night and day. Netflix and even cable "HD" is just compressed 720p, or at best compressed 1080p. The fidelity between the two are significantly different.

Exactly. Not everyone has fast internet, and typically can be very expensive, and in many cases even if you're willing to pay for it, it may not even be available. It wasn't until the last couple of years that my parents got 10Mbps. Until then they were living on 1.5Mbps. And it also cost them twice as much.

In any case imho regarding optical drives, I think it's great to have the option. However to compromise space in a small, thin, light laptop to make sure it has an optical drive to me is a waste of space. But for traditional sized 15"+ laptops why not have one? At the very least you have the option to add an additional hard drive.

 

It's all about choice and I love choice. I LOL @ the people who think it's necessary to LOL @ the people who opt for a different choice. Of course with me, I use such awesome hyperbole, if you don't get my sarcasm, then sadly, you also probably missed my point.

 

I use my optical all the time and I get speeds like this. Just some people use it and some don't.

 

I just find it so strange to hear people clamoring for something to be removed from a laptop. I figured I'd hear people screaming to remove vga links before a slot-loading optical drive.

 

I still can't bring myself to off the ODD. Too many times I've ripped a DVD for a family member, or burn a music CD for someone. I know as soon as I take it out I'll be in a situation I wish I didn't. Its still too useful not to have one for me.
Even though 99% of my games are digital download, I still enjoy the tactile experience of owning disc based media. Then again, I'm still collecting vinyl so...

 

Welcome to my world!

Well most of the time it's like that. Very occasionally I get faster speeds. Such as this last Sunday I was getting 4mb/s downloads. It was heaven for the 24 hours it lasted.

 

There are still times that I need a ODD.
Installing old games, ripping cds, you can always use a usb odd to handle those tasks if you have no ODD internally but you may not have that around when you need it.

When we say gaming laptops, to me that is a nice high end 17" machine and I would rather have a ODD than not have it since with 17" gaming laoptops you already have 2 HDD's in most cases and maybe even 1 or 2 MSATA SSD's I really would not need a 3rd drive, so the ODD holds more value.

If we are talking about just everyday machines in the 12"-15" range where you have only 1 drive and 1 optical drive. Yeah I would prefer the swap to the extra HDD/SSD

 

You really can't wait a day to play that game? If you're that eager you got it on release date and the servers are crashing anyway and you probably can't even register. You probably can't even get to the forum to complain. That's how gaming is these days. I see these guys standing in line at GameStop at midnight and I just shake my head, you're just signing up for rage.

Bluray is nice but it's way too slow. Maybe you guys have high end players. But every bluray drive I've owned, from ps3 to standalone to internal sata, it takes global epochs just to get to menu. I can't deal with that. I'll take a lesser quality mkv or Netflix stream.

Anyway the reason I prefer no optical is for smaller/lighter laptop.

I don't really see the need for a big mechanical drive either. A 240-256 gb ssd is all I need. Cloud the pix and music, put the mkvs on a USB 3 portable drive.

 

<>

Reminds me of the people who were debating between netflix or Blockbuster 2 years ago ?? lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAtJMD8jX0U

Purchase a $20 external Drive and your good to go

One thing that I will defend regarding physical media is the xbox 1 & PS4....

They could not launch without an ODD, for the same reason everyone nerd raged about the always online Xbox. There is still a significant amount of their customer base that doesn't always have access to a reliable internet connection....

Still if I was a holder of Gamestop stock I would be selling at the end of this year after the new systems launch.

This truly will be the last console launch relying on physical media... if not the last console launch period....

 

I like putting any new cd's I get onto my computer, can't stand any mp3 quality stuff you can download.

 

I can only speak for myself, but I find the ODD useless and wish there were more models available without one, as this allows for the chassis to be thinner.

Nothing wrong with continuing to offer an optical drive on various laptops, just wish there were more high end thin form factor models to choose from without ODD.

 

This post didn't really make a whole lot of sense.

 

Try having music that'll fill up all the free versions of dropbox, skydrive, google drive, and iCloud. Tha'ts how much music I have. now take your 240gb ssd, subtract the space of windows x64, drivers, large applications such as the whole office suite, the whole adobe suite, cad programs (2d and 3d), dev programs, and about 20 games. I'm pretty sure there's little to no space left on that, if all of that would fit. This is why we have larger drives, people who need the space, and manufacturers know that. Also SSD still isn't super reliable, I only trust it for boot and drivers. HDD is still superior in terms of lifetime, but that's nowhere compared to tape, tapes never went bad unless you messed with the film, now if you drop a HDD it breaks, and if you use your SSD like your HDD it will die fairly quickly.
Plus what if you're not on the internet at the time, where do you get your music then? Oh, that's right, you don't. You're probably a person that stay's on wifi 24/7 because you can upload all those things to the cloud. Also portable drives fill up quickly, and people don't always have the money to get another/a bigger drive. Another reason why mass storage is preferred over SSD, also common users won't give a flip over speeds. Unless you have a HUGE file (which by your post I'm thinking that you most likely don't) you probably could not care about the few more seconds wasted if you didn't have a SSD. Also you'd need a larger drive for games (again the money thing with buying externals constantly) or else your steam library is gonna fill that drive quickly. While you're running a 240-256gb, I'm running 4tb, now do the math.. I have what 8.4 to 8 times more space then you do for everything. So keep buying external drives, keep paying for your clouds, I'll still have the best in money and the best in lifetime.
I actually find SSD to be useless outside of boot drives, they die. Also my "external" type setup would actually be my home server.. So I'll never actually run out of storage space.

 

I agree with you that SSD's aren't enough for alot of media. Not to start a urinating contest but I have about 600gb of music, then another 600gb of samples and that's without talking about games etc. No way I wanna put that on a SSD. I just have multiple 1tb laptop external HDDs for each type of media hooked up to a hub.
I sounds like you've had a rough time with SSD's, which is where I disagree. They have been 100% rock solid reliable for me, I cant say the same about HDD. So anyway, SSD's get the demanding games/apps/boot and HDD gets the older games and media that doesn't benefit from speed.

P.S I dont know why you're giving taetertot attitude. He/she did mention external HDD were used for other stuff which isn't so different from what your doing anyway.

 

I think it's funny how people are saying to get an external hard drive, external optical drive, external this, external that. Then what's the point? Why get external when you can have it internal? External is OK for a more or less fixed location at home, but if you have lots of music, movies, other media you want with you and your laptop, it's just more crap you have to carry, more likely to get damaged or lost.

I understand your point to support the notion of keeping optical drive bays, but I also think your ideas/judgements on SSD's are misinformed. The notion that SSD's will be dead sooner than an HDD are just wrong wrong wrong. People freak out about the "limited writes" of an SSD, but it's been shown that 128GB SSD's will survive easily 10+ years with 10-20GB/day written to them. Significantly more the larger the drive gets. Hard drives are just as susceptible to die as an SSD, just different failure modes. That being said, hard drives are still very inexpensive storage media, and for $100 you can get 1TB of storage where an SSD will cost you six times that.

On the other hand, if you have a significant amount of data and are storing it all on multiple hard drives or even stuff on the cloud, just make your own home server instead, or use a smart NAS. It's your own personal cloud storage, and have physical access to the media if you need it. I have 14TB of storage with secondary and tertiary backups and in total cost me a little over $1200. Everything is in one convenient location, not in the hands of marketing departments, and have the freedom to do with it what I want. You just need an internet connection to access your data.

I do like to carry around a lot of media and stuff on my laptop as well. So I guess it's good to have the combination of SSD+HDD+Cloud Storage (or home server/NAS).

You can't be serious? There's a plethora of laptops without ODD's even 15" - 17" ones. Typically gaming notebooks have the optical drive because they're big and thick anyhow, and offers the extra storage bay option. But if you look at the less gaming type notebooks they are all thin with no ODD.

 

I have something in the order of 120 games (and drivers, other software) on DVD and CD going back to the mid 90s (not counting 3.5 disk games, but that's another story), and probably 100+ movies on DVD and Blu-Ray. I do not have the time to burn every one of these, nor do I want to ditch the media as they're all nicely organized with their serials.

Sure, if you're a kid <22 years old, I can see why you may not need an optical disc. For anyone who was into gaming (or movies) in any real way before 2008, you still need an optical drive.

 

This is my situation, so exactly this. Not to mention the fact that games are getting larger, especially with both upcoming consoles using blu-ray.

Also, if I'm playing $2,000 for a laptop, it's going to become my main machine. So I'll want blu-ray for travel. I'll need a drive to I install expensive programs that I don't want to repurchase. Things like AutoCAD and Photoshop.

 

LOL. So true. You should see my collection of PC game boxes. Ridiculously huge. Going back to late 80's early, 90's even.

 

I have a bunch of games from the 90-ies and pre 2008 and I still don't need an ODD.
I switched those games to my external HDD by making appropriate image files out of them for when I wish to play them.

Personally, I have no use for the ODD. I may have used it about a handful of times in the last 5 years, and only when other people needed something done. For personal use? No.

I'm not interested in Blu-Ray content as I don't really watch anything anymore except for a few minor things that peak my interest (but those are mainly in maybe HD format and not Blu-Ray) which I mainly get from the Internet, and my download speed is 4Mbps (upload is 0.5Mbps).
As for multi-gigabyte files (12GB and above... well, I just begin downloading them and leave the download be until it gets done. Sure it can be time-consuming, but its not as if I don't have other things to do in the meantime that don't involve the computer, or perhaps even surf other websites, or work in 3d, and a little waiting never killed anyone.

Seriously, the ODD (to me) is utterly useless. There are a ton of ways to move around this even for those who might need it occasionally (for example, get an external USB optical disc reader).
Laptops would greatly benefit from the extra space.

As for SSD's not being good enough... they can be, but the market still keeps them ridiculously expensive and have not made sufficiently large versions (because if the prices dropped to HDD levels and manuf. made the effort to make SSD's as large as mechanical drives - which has been more than possible, it would eat into the sales of HDD's, which is an obsolete technology, like most of what we have in the market, but of course they aren't ready to 'let it go' because they can still make profits from it).

 

How do you install or re-install Windows if you don't have an ODD on a laptop?