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

Ok I hear what you are guys are saying, not to be a hypocrite but I did spec a 7200 rpm 1tb drive along with the 256 gb msata in my new w230st. LOL! But the rig is chunky and heavy (for its screen size) anyway so it didnt make a difference. But if I could get an Airbook style chassis with a decent gpu where you lose the 2.5" drive and just have an msata, I'd do that in a heartbeat.

Here's the thing about files. I have a ton of them too. A 1.5tb external filled with nothing but champions league, euro, and world cup matches for example. Another 1.5tb filled with nothing but hq flac files. Etc. (In fact I'm in the process of building a desktop that will hold a half dozen or so 4tb hdds to house all this stuff in a centralized location.) I couldn't fit all this on a laptop obviously. I have to shuttle files back and forth on an as needed/wanted basis anyway. That being the cases -- there is never any one moment in time when I need tb's worth of space. A 256 ssd will do me. 512s are available. Heck you could do a 960gb m500. And just tote a tiny external usb 3 that carries what you need for that period of time.

Do you guys even use a laptop for media files anyway? I don't, not since I got tablets and smartphones. Music is on those, and a 64gb phone (with a 64gb sd card if you have an android) fits more music than you would want to carry. I don't need hq flac for my phone, just on an hdd that can connect to my home theater and stereo. Same with movies; I use hulu and netflix. And the guy talking about access to wifi -- do any of you really use your laptop in an area where you can't get wifi? I don't. Cafes, airports, hotels, an increasing number of restaurants even, all have free wifi. You could always tether in an emergency. And for a lot of functions, like browsing and email, you can just use your phone.

So that leaves games and work files. Games, well a 256 for me fits Windows 7, Adobe Creative Suite, an old version of PageMaker, Office, and a half dozen steam games and I have a ton of space left over. If you want all your steam games available at all times, well then I guess you need a 1 tb drive in there. But I don't ever keep more than a half dozen or so steam titles installed at any one time. Most retail titles are 6-8 gigs (Dark Souls and Arkham Asylum for example). Only a few crazy titles like Fear with expansions and Dragon Age Ultimate pack 15-20 gbs. Even the ultimate versions of Fallout and Fallout NV pack only 10 gigs each.

As for work files, those are not big. I work in publishing, that's as storage intensive as anything. I have plenty of space. I work on the state licensing exam for engineers, I see a lot of those geotech and structural engineers doing their cad work with work files on basic laptops with 320gb hdds. If you want to carry around your entire work history with you then maybe you need the space -- but why would you?

As for optical drives, again, why bluray on the road? Bluray imho is for your home theater. Netflix and hulu will do you on the road. And if you really do want bluray, well that's not all that often right? Get an external. They're like $70.

And for old games, well, I started gaming with the Commodore64 lol. But there's only like a half dozen old games I still want to play. You get them from GOG for $4.99. Mindboggling to me that anyone would want an optical in their laptop for this purpose, but hey if that's what you like, go for it. Maybe you want to get a 5.25" floppy drive and an adapter too lol, play some old SSI gold box games or something.

I used to be like you guys, I needed to have lots of hdd space. I always got 17" behemoths with multiple hdd bays and swapped the optical for a caddy. But tablets and phones and small cheap and big external storage options have really changed my mind on what I need to carry. So now I am into small laptops that are as light as possible. And I find myself using the laptop more, because I'm much more likely to take a 4.5 lb laptop around than a 15 lb monster.

So I totally get what the OP is saying about ditching the optical drive. Wasn't all that diplomatically worded, the OP, lol, but I get what he's saying. Smaller and lighter the better, lose the optical, the hdd, use the space to engineer better cooling and just give us powerful cpu, gpu, ram and msata sdd.

 

Bluray could always be used for emulating ps3 games, or if you develop games for ps3 and need to test them, best reason I have for bluray.
As for everyone that said stuff about SSDs after what I commented last; I work for my school (not really work, but more voluntarily help out- we're a technology based school now) And from the few thousand units we have that use SSD's, and the rest that run HDDs, and my personal experiences; HDD is more reliable, SSD for now is good for boot and nonwriting applications. Until SSD becomes more reliable in terms of lifetime, I won't use them outside of boot. Also the price/gb is terrible.

 

Yeah, OK. Lots of luck with that.

 

Everyone situation is different, and there is no wifi on the road in probably 95+% of the world. Wimax maybe but that is not so common aswell.

I mean road.

Ssd life is a kind of fun topic , it can endure the write, but who know if it can last 10years. Anyone have a ssd more than 10 years?


Phone and tablet do play music and video but the quality from pc will be better most of the time.

 

Razer Blade 14". Or look at the bottom of this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...-clevo-w230st-sager-np7330-owners-lounge.html

Lots of options to choose from.

Downloaded programs, video files, games, virtual machines, dual boot, etc, 1TB goes fast. Toting an external drive is just asking for loss or damaged data.

Good for you. I rarely have wi-fi access, and it's rarely ever the fastest, quite limited speed usually. Ok for web browsing and that's about it. Heck I don't even have a smart phone because I don't want to pay the $1000+ a year it costs. I prefer my laptop over any other device, because to me a handheld is ok for quick and dirty but it's too clumsy for any real work or even consumption of media.

Lots of games, a few you mentioned are 10-20GB each easily. BF3 is 35GB, Skyrim with mods can get to 30-40GB, Flight Simulator can grow to over 100GB if you add a lot of aircraft, detailed scenery, etc. Heck I have 150GB used with only 7-8 games installed.

I fill up my 320GB HDD with Excel, powerpoint, images, videos, etc. I have 100GB on my work network shared drive too. It's easy to fill. I'm in engineering btw.

Again, external is not great for toting around with you. Too much risk for damage or loss or theft. Netflix and Hulu? lulz. Those hardly supply everything you want to watch and cost a monthly fee to boot. Blu-ray is not for home theater. Blu-ray is the optical video standard. It has replaced DVD.

The funny thing is BOTH TYPES OF LAPTOPS EXIST! With and without optical drives. So why does it have to be only without? ODD drive has evolved into an expansion drive. And even look at the Lenovo Y400/410p and Y500/510p. It's an ODD or an extra fan or extra battery or even an extra GPU. Versatility to have what you want. I'd rather have that flexibility than be pigeonholed into a single type of laptop that only caters to a portion of the user base.

No, but it's calculated life. Total writes/writes per day = # days of writes. Same way any product has a calculated MTBF and simulated life testing. And who wants / needs any storage drive for more than 5 years anyhow? Speed and capacity improve significantly not to mention other technology in a laptop or PC like USB, wireless, graphics, power draw, etc.

 

I seriously considered that one, but for the price premium over the w230st, I didn't prefer it. The type of notebook I'm talking about doesn't exist yet, I don't think.

1tb goes too fast, that's what moved me away from big storage on a laptop to begin with. With a 1tb drive, I'd still have to shuffle files around, there is no way I could ever have everything on a laptop. I found that once I started paring down, it was easy to go way down.

Dam dude that's just crazy. I could not function without a smartphone anymore lol. Stuck in line at DMV, time to whip out the phone and check out an episode of something on Hulu. Want to order takeout on the way home, take out the phone and check out the menu. Need driving directions, you get the idea. Take pix at 13 mp, record 1080p vids, listen to music, calendar and notes in your palm, etc. You really need to get an iPhone or galaxy s4 man.

Yeah it is true there are some crazy big games. I don't get why bioshock infinite is 20+ gb for example. A 256 would stretch me if I wanted a bunch of these for sure. A 512 would do me though. But again I never have that many games installed at any one time.

You really need that much data with you at all times? Like I said I do dtp, some project folders get big. But never that big that I need hundreds of gbs for my current files.

Get that smartphone and tell me if you feel the same way. Something like a galaxy s4 is awesome for movies, and with a small fee you get a huge library. Versus renting one specific movie in advance at a cost that's like half or a third of a monthly sub fee for either of those services. And you don't have to fiddle with inserting a disc, and the slow as molasses ui and disc operation of a bluray. I'm not against bluray btw, I have it for my home theater.

Is it possible that stuff is holding the industry back though? What if Clevo could design around a no hdd, no odd concept, using the same size chassis? Dedicate that space to better cooling, or a flatter, lighter design?

 

You described:

"But if I could get an Airbook style chassis with a decent gpu where you lose the 2.5" drive and just have an msata, I'd do that in a heartbeat."

Which sounds remarkably like the Blade.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Player which is essentially a 5" Android tablet. But it's too small for me to do anything productive really. I don't even enjoy watching movies it's too small. And the cost of Smartphone is just too much to justify for the occasional ADD moments when I'm bored for 5 minutes waiting for something.

The W230ST is essentially that. The only thing they could do is ditch the 2.5" drive bay and instead use a separate fan for the CPU which is what I would find ideal. But I don't think it could really get any thinner. They'd have to do like the blade and other 14" thin "gaming" notebooks and stick with 35W CPU's and sacrifice user upgradeability like the Blade does.

 

I have Mass Effect 2 on an optical disc. Bought it years ago. ME2 requires the disc in a drive to play. If I want to play ME2, I can:

(1) buy the game again for $20,
(2) apply a "no-CD" hack that BioWare says it will lock my account for if they ever discover I used it, even though I own the game (saw comments to that effect on their forums), or
(3) play it on a gaming PC with an optical drive.

I own enough older games that were originally purchased on optical discs, and still like them enough, that #3 is a sensible choice for me.

 

1a) Buy the game again when it goes on sale from any number of distributors for 50-75% less than that.


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Factor in time and that get really expensive.

 

More like a regular MacBook than air. The asus zenbooks get closer to the air book chassis but they're too weak for gaming. But I like where those are headed. I have other problems with the Razer also, tho if the w230st hadn't come out, I probably would have picked it. That or the zenbook u500.

Well they're not productivity devices, but contacts and calendar etc are indispensable to me. To have all that on a wallet sized device that weighs nothing, that I can slip into a suit pocket, that's where technology really begins to improve my day to day. It is stupidly expensive with a high data plan though, you're right about that, it's one of the biggest annual bills I have.

Don't forget watching sports in church or weddings or funerals or whatever. Can't really unzip the messenger bag and boot windows in situations like that.

That's what I mean. I'm not techy enough to understand how pc components work, but what if you could devote the hdd and odd space to a spiderweb of copper or something, and end up with more powerful Gpus in a 14 or smaller chassis? Even at the desktop replacement level, if you could devote those 3 hdd bays to cooling and get desktop equivalent Gpus in there? That to me would be worth a lot more than you guys grimly clinging to your data files and 20 steam games at once lol. But we're never going to get there if you s keep clinging to your mechanical drives and bluray!

Also,mw230st is chunky, sad if they can't get thinner than that.

Incidentally I have a 2.5" mechanical drive from my fried msi on my desk right now, hooked up to a sata/USB adapter. Thing is not small. It's not huge but it's not small. This is taking up major real estate in a rig like w230st.

I'm in that situation with a lot of games, shrug, I just buy steam games I don't have yet and play those instead. Sooner or later the titles I have on disc will hit a stupidly low price and then I'll get it. Like I have Sleeping Dogs on ps3, but it went on sale for $6.29 on steam.

 

Among the multitude of distributors, the wait for a deep discount is a couple weeks at most. Play something else in the meantime.


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LOL. Hard to please and unrealistic. It's nice to be naive about technology.

lol. /shrug/ chunky. The thing has components that are typically used in 15" notebooks and it's too chunky? Only the Blade has similar components, but only has 37W CPU, no 2.5" drive bay, a crap screen, and no upgradeable components. That's how it gets thin, and it's a 14" not 13". No other laptop has those components that aren't in a 15" or larger form factor. There's other 14" notebooks out there but they only have 750m, a couple have 760m, and all have 37W or smaller CPU's. Granted, I think Clevo should have opted for the 37W CPU's as well, just because it can't seem to manage the heat put out by the 47W CPU's very well. The W230ST is designed to accommodate an extra 20-25W TDP with the faster CPU's and 765m over the 37W CPU's and 750m, which contributes to it's thickness as well . Personally I'd rather have a laptop that I can open and swap out components and clean without voiding warranty. But that's just me.

 

Seriously though, don't you think mechanical drives will be extinct in not too long? What will be done with the space? There will still be a need for 17" rigs. They'll get thinner I imagine. But there ought to be more room to design around.

It's crazy how much storage tech has changed. I remember tape drives lol. Everything will move to something ssd like in the near future, and then organic drives before I'm dead and storage needs will be met by pinhead sized devices. And then we can have 2" laptops!

That's why I chose w230st. But I did spec a 37watt CPU, the 4702. It was one of your posts that led me in that direction btw. It is a bit thick though, at 1.4" for a 13.3.

 

Why not put storage on SD cards then.. I'm sure that'll turn out to be a great idea, especially when the price of everything that uses them jumps up. Your physical copies of games are ~$60 brand new, using DVD of course, but some use 2 or more discs. Now if they're on SD cards (or maybe even usb sticks) they'll jump up past $100 just to cover the price of the part and the game. It's cheaper to manufacture on a system that everyone has, and on something that is cheap to use. So until there's another cheap median for physical games or movies or such, ODD is here to stay.

And I remember the days of tape drives, doesn't Google still use them tho?

 

US military does also. I work with tape drives every now and again. I am also glad that I have a laptop with an ODD. Just a few weeks ago I had to reinstall windows onto my laptop and thanks to the nature of my work, it had to be done in the middle of the ocean inside a ship. Glad I had my disk.

 

In my view, there are not enough thin form factor laptops (under 1" thick) with a decent dedicated graphics card for gaming at 1080p.

- 17" Razer Blade Pro with Nvidia 765m, i7-4700MQ, 1080p display, 0.88" (22.4mm) thick

- 15" Samsung Series 7 Chronos / Ativ Book with AMD 8870m, i7-3635QM, 1080p display, 0.82" (21mm) thick - this model was displayed at CES but never got a US launch

- 15" Gigabyte P35K with Nvidia 765m, i7-4700MQ, 1080p display, 0.82" (21mm) thick - not available in the US

- 14" Gigabyte P34G with Nvidia 760m, i7-4700MQ, 1080p display, 0.82" (21mm) thick - not available in the US

- 14" Razer Blade with Nvidia 765m, i7-4700MQ, 0.66" (16.7mm) thick - display limited to 1600x900

- 14" MSI-GE40 with Nvidia 760m, i7-4702MQ, 0.87" (22mm) thick - display limited to 1600x900

- 15" MSI GS70 with Nvidia 765m, i7-4700MQ, 1080p display 0.85" (21.5mm) thick - large ugly red logo on the lid

 

Eh, just my two cents, but it's nice to have an ODD laying around *somewhere* so you can use it when needed. I still burn CDs fairly regularly since my car only accepts CD input (and FM transmitter, though that eats AAA batteries) and CDs are stupid cheap (100 for around $15 on Newegg). Still have several CD/DVD copies of beloved games that I won't repurchase digitally since that's just flushing money down the toilet needlessly, so there's another use.

Though I don't buy CD/DVD-based software anymore, it's a valid option for when your internet connection is just awful. Working with 1.5 Mb/s down at home whenever I visit (to add insult to injury, the router is G-only, no Wireless-N), and that's the max that's offered by our ISP (there's another that offers 20 Mb/s and better, though that'd require a major shift of equipment since everything in the house is bundled :/). Hell, during Steam Summer Sales, I just buy the games and not download them at all until I go back to college (15 Mb/s down) where I can.

That said, I did remove the ODD from my W520 and replaced it with a 750GB HDD, since my desktop has a ODD. Before that, I bought a Samsung external ODD and that broke within a month or two; it was a piece of junk.

 

Maybe that should tell you something then? That it's not practical to have powerful components in a thin chassis.

You really need at minimum 192-bit GPU for effective performance at 1080p and those come at the cost of a lot of extra heat which means larger heatsinks and fans. While overall surface area is important you also need a minimum thickness section to make it functional. Even if you eliminate an optical drive you will have to maintain the thickness for the cooling components.

 

Here is a gaming notebook which DOES NOT have an optical drive. MSI GS70. MSI Intros "World's Thinnest, Lightest" 17-inch Gaming Laptop
And it is the lightest and thinnest 17" gaming notebook.

 

Agreed ... but the second after the 10GB game is finished installed from DVDs Steam will start downloading a 6GB patch

 

Though you don't necessarily need the patch to start the game.

 

Umm, yeah that's correct

 

I have a hard time understanding the question though.

Most Clevo/Alienware/MSI gaming notebooks have 2 HDD slots with 1 optical drive. With SSDs going up to 1TB and HDDs going up to 2TB, you essentially will have 2/4TB of storage space + an ODD.

What is the problem? Semms to me like the people who complain about the optical drive is a really really small usergroup

 

I personally believe that people who need ODD is a really small user group

 

Why change something that works, thats all im saying. Since most get the amount of storage they need without sacrificing the ODD.

It will be very interesting once the industry move up to 4K. I wonder what internet speed you need to be able to stream that quality.

 

Well I'll agree, I practically never use an optical drive either.

I took mine out of my m14x then, and surprisingly temps went down by 7-8 degrees on my GPU, no more throttling, wow O_O

 

Some people probably said the same thing for the floppy disk drive.

There's just no point to an ODD in this day and age.
With USB sticks, storage, etc., ODD's are rarely used. Realistically, there's nothing wrong in offering the ODD as an external USB drive if a person really needs/wants it.

Look at smartphones, tablets and netbooks. They don't have ODD's and people manage just fine. Majority of people get their things from the Internet and they transfer the most wanted files to an external storage for safe-keeping - which is arguably safer and more 'future proof' than an optical disc that can be scratched and render files unreadable.
My external 1TB HDD, 2.5" fell accidentally on the floor several times now, being no worse for wear. It functions to this day without problems, my data is accessible, safe, and not corrupted.
The optical discs on the other hand didn't survive nearly that long. One small scratch or smear causes a world of problems.
I'm not saying external HDD's aren't subject to similar problems - indeed they are, but they offer far larger storage capacity for easier transportation.
I'm not gonna shuffle a gazillion optical disks with me.

 

Optical drives are not a must any longer. Last time i used the optical drive in my gamming laptop was like 2 years ago. Now i only purchase games that are steam or origin ready, just to make sure i always will be able to download the game, no matter where I am.

 

That's pretty much the #1 problem with optical storage for the Average Joe. Too much crap to manage, as far as storing those discs are concerned.

 

I bet if we had voting options here then 75% would agree to have a laptop without ODD.

 

Personally Id much rather have a collection of original disks, with covers and everything, than an anonymous USB drive or HDD labeled "Games".
For me it is either Game collection on Steam or the complete game with cover and everything. Steam, like I mentioned earlier is just as good, but then there is the whole pain with downloading big files.

 

Post one up. You may be surprised by the results. As I said in a previous post, I still find them quite useful (ODD and discs) for various purposes. Also, as I live in an area prone to hurricanes, I like the fact that discs are waterproof. Yes, they are waterproof external/usb drives, but at a much greater cost than the sub $1 price per disc. Given that most mass produced machines (read non high performance gaming) still come standard with ODDs, my guess is most of the population outside this forum still has a need for them as well.

 

A friend made a small approximation on about how big his blu-ray collection would be if he put it on a hdd a while back. Just the size wasn't something you could conveniently back up in a day, even if you made rips with some compression. Same with the games. And when you plug in your external disk in a tv with a bad routine for handling large files or large sizes of disks, and all of it's wiped.. not really that great.

A huge NAS drive or something is useful, though, it's not that. But I wouldn't want online streaming to replace some sort of semi-permanent storage media. What I would like to see is disks being replaced by custom-designed memory cards with some sort of reasonably universal interface. So you could easily plug it into a phone, or a module into a phone, a pc, a console, etc. But the idea that everything is inevitably going in the "cloud" isn't something that works outside groups of people who sniff too much MacWorld, imo.

 

Given that almost all laptops have 16:9 aspect ratio it mean that... it means... it means nothing about preference of majority of people.

We take back ODD and give you Gorilla glass screen? Hell yeah!
We don't put ODD and give additional USB, esata, display port or pci express port to put SSD simply inside and outside like SD card? I'm in!
We don't put ODD and giving you enough slots for HDDs and SSDs we make laptop thinner? Certainly! Why not?

 

Since this topic is about gaming laptops, the notebooks wont get thinner if we remove the ODD. The thickness is still required for the cooling of the GTX GPUs.

PCi Express would be nice, but thats coming anyway as SATA Express once Intel is getting their behinds in gear and releasing the chipset that supports it. IO group is already finished with the specification works, now its up to OEMs and Intel to push it out to end users.
http://www.techspot.com/news/53567-sata-32-finalized-includes-sata-express-for-2-gb-s-of-bandwidth.html

 

I think is not possible to remove the ODD cause of physical stores still sell games. When they decide to stop selling pc games, probably they will remove the ODD from laptops.

 

That's the point, Cloudfire, THEY ALREADY ARE! I wrote about this 8 hours ago. The MSI GS series moved the ODD from the laptop and created 2 radiator grills with holes on the both sides of the laptop! That is how GPU is cooled down, using the freed space for cooling and ports.

 

But it's still "just" a 765m. It's a 128-bit GPU. Nothing special done here. I'd rather see a 1"-1.25" thick notebook with a 770m than a 0.8" notebook with a 765m.

 

It is new and needs testing) MSI checked out how will GE series be selling and looks like it was very popular thin gaming notebook so therefore then went farer. Improved GE with stuff like backlit keyboard and other which they were afraid to put before cost-thinking and created another thinner laptop. Who knows, maybe in 2 years we will see MSI hard gaming notebook with GTX 970M

 

Well I suppose a thin notebook like GS70 could deal with the low end of GTX series, like 765M which is a 50W GPU. But in no way could do that with 75W and 100W GPUs like HTWingNut mention.

GE and GS cant be compared. The reason why MSI accomplished putting that 765M inside that thin shell is because they put in 2 fans (GE/GT only have 1), 1 for GPU and 1 for CPU.

Looking at Alienware and Dell, one can still have ODD and 2 fans in the gaming notebooks. I dont want a thin, hot and noisy notebook with 100W components, even if that was possible if they removed the ODD.

 

No doubt that's the case right now, but is that a current design/tech limitation, or dictated by a hard law of thermodynamics that cannot ever be overcome? I would think it has to be the former. Give manufacturers a lot more room to play with and see what they can do. ODD takes up a ton of space. Go further, get rid of the 2.5 bay too, just go with msata. We don't need all these ports either IMHO.

Rigs don't have to be all that thin either, keep the current thickness even, just use the space for better cooling. There's other stuff you can do also, how about a small internal battery pack that allows removable battery swapping without shutdown?

Even for you ODD diehards here, wouldn't that be a lot better than the occasional bluray movie and being able to keep a huge list of games?

 

They are capable of making w.e you design, but they are business not science institute.

Nbr is minority.

 

Yeah I thought about that small reserve battery a while back. I like that idea for a hot swap. Like maybe a single 1 cell 10WHr battery.

Bottom line is that I think laptop manufacturers have found or are close to finding that sweet spot for ODD use in laptops. Thin and light ones are popular and none of them come with an optical drive.

 

I think the thickness you find on the Clevo/Alienware/MSI machines are a combination of many things.

First of all, you need a big fan to cool off hot components. Meaning they take up some room. You could go with slimmer versions of fans, but how will the accustics be? Most likely whiiiiiiine compared to whooooosh if you know what I mean. But most importantly, bigger shovels mean its capable of pushing more air. Just look at the fan MSI use in thei GT notebooks, that fan can move more air than the two fans combined you find on Clevo/Alienware

If they make the notebook thinner, all sorts of "problems" could occur. Will the casing become hotter since its closer to the components? How much force can it withstand compared to bigger with more materials? Is there room for 3 layer heatsink the high end GPUs require? How much noise wise will the thin casing isolate?

As for keeping the thickness but using the space ODD used for other things, yeah why not. That could be a great idea but im not sure what. Hotswap would be great. Cooling wise, not sure if that would produce so much better results that its worth it.

 

The problem I am seeing here is that users are expecting high end gaming laptop performance in a tablet. Not gonna happen. Laws of physics dominate here. Could things be a bit slimmer and lighter? Sure the could. But only slightly or with serious compromises to heat management and noise.

 

Sigh... this thread again.

For people like me, i always have this old game i need to run with a CD, and thus why i have an optical drive in my laptop. But the bright side is, maybe later on, you can always put a caddy to replace that ODD, get some juicy Raid 0 goodness, and with certain laptops, you can even add a battery pack or graphics card in the drive bay

MSI GE is a stove. Avoid avoid avoid avoid.

 

Why can't we have horizontal heat sinks and bladeless fans? Both techs exist in other contexts.

I don't necessarily want super thin chassis though. It has to be proportional to overall size. A 17" should be an inch thick at least. I just want better use of space to innovate.

 

Hmm, I prefer to have an optical drive for installing larger games, as Cloudfire mentioned before. I'm also a fan of movies and I tend to rent/buy movies quite often. There are external ODD's as well, but having one inside my system is great when I'm on the move. I wouldn't consider the ODD a necessity, by any means, but it's nice to have a Blu-ray player.

 

Rip the old discs to ISOs or your choice of disc image format, back them up to a hard drive, and the problem's solved. That way you don't have to worry about discs getting scratched or degrading, you can run them a lot faster than an ODD would, and you can mount multiple virtual drives to save the trouble of disc swapping.