Do you want an optical drive on your next laptop?

I haven't used an optical drive for anything except installs since maybe a decade ago. I feel frequently frustrated that computer manufacturers keep putting optical drives in the computers. It seems obvious that the space should be used for either a 2.5" SSD/HDD, or a 3-4 cell reserve battery.

My first thought is that PC makers keep putting ODDs in because "you people" want them. But then, I think about the ubiquitous VGA port. Nobody uses those, except professors, like twice a year.

So my question is, if you had a choice between ODD and other. What would be your first choice?

 

Yes, my next desktop laptop will have a built in BD drive. I also prefer ultraportables with BD drives also.
If i need a optical drive i want it just there. I don't want to make those extra few steps to go and look for an external. I also find an external a bit messy.

It's about comfort and ease for me. I still purchase physical BD's, DVD's and CD's. I don't download films online and have no intention to do so anytime soon. I have a massive cd collection and sometimes i like to just play a cd on my laptop. I do have an iPod also but have only ripped certain songs. Some BD's also i'm not certan if they can be copied.
I also do not have unlimited internet.

I also own a camcorder and burn footage for friends and family. Not only that I backup to dvd also and have quite a lot of photos backed up to dvd's.

I like watching movies in bed, i don't lol want a external dvd player hanging over the side, very much impractical for me. Also, i don't have the inclination to start ripping my dvd's to sd card, usb or my hd, especially not when i'm at home anyway. It's just another thing that needs doing in my very busy day.

May be if i get unlimited internet i may start changing my mind.

The best solution is a removable dvd drive that can be replaced with a weight saver/2nd battery.

 

OD should be standard, you can DIY a storage device with a adapter.

Obviously the best option would be to have the option in the first place though.

As for VGA... I use it all the time for presentations most projectors are still VGA that are use in business.

Optical Drive, used it this week backing up CD's to my drive.

Extra HDD... have not needed it I have 2x500GB drives currently already and a 500GB external drive in my bag.


Im fine with no OD in a netbook though since the size is so important but if your talking laptops that have a drive on them already I would still prefer the OD to a extra HDD.

 

That makes sense. Even if you're not a collector, as long as you like owning physical, tangible items, it makes sense. I suppose I'm always thinking of ways to get rid of the stuff lying around in my apartment.

I dream of the day that I own very little. Instead, I'd want unlimited access to content, much the way Zune Pass works for music. Only, it'd be for movies, TV, sports, everything on every device, cross platform, any time, internationally.

 

I use my optical drive once every 3-6 months

So no, I'd rather have it as external instead of in my laptop. I'd use the space for something I can benefit from - HDD for example and I plan to do that on my current laptop as well some day.

I never buy physical DVDs or CDs.... everything is available online ---> faster, more convenient, space saving, environmentally better and free
Whatever I need to save - my external drives are always available over USB

 

I'd rather the space the ODD takes up be used for extra ports (ie, HDMI, DisplayPort, eSATA, perhaps even ThunderBolt) and less weight.

On the VGA note, however, I use it very regularly to connect to projectors. Many schools and businesses do not have projectors that take digital video. The VGA screws, though, are useless to me, and I'm glad my X120e has gotten rid of them.

 

There's an "OTHER" button just waiting for you up there.

 

i install the os from a thumb drive, the rest all over network. my pc's don't have drives as well, only my server has (to .. import .. bluray/dvds to it).

so i will continue to not use or need optical drives outside of movies, and those get insta-converted into the digital land.

and i'm glad that the product line i buy doesn't have them: the 27xx from hp. tablet convertible laptop, 12".

 

Of course i want a optical drive in my next laptop. So many uses for it even if you try to avoid the drive.

- You get driver/utility CDs, you get Windows CDs. Too much hassle with downloading everything to deal with the fact you are missing a optical drive.
- Friend comes over with a CD or maybe want to show you a DVD.
- Games
- Software
- You have no access to internet at some location but have the software on a CD

Even though it is not a requirement anymore, it is still a nice feature. Like 3D.

 

I have not used my optical drive ever. Had this laptop for more than a year now. Install everything I need by downloading it. Are there any programs left that require you to use a physical media?

The laptop I had before was the same. After I gave it to my brother he asked me if I had noticed that the DVD drive makes weird noises. Had to say "sorry bro, never used it once."

Total waste of space even on desktops. External DVD drives are so cheap that I rather have one of those in case I ever do need it. They can fill it up with whatever suits the notebook design. For small and light make them smaller and lighter, for business/travel notebooks put in a bigger battery and for desktop replacements a 2nd HDD or SSD.

 

I haven't used the optical drive on my Thinkpad T410s in forever, only used it ONCE when i first got it to create backup Rescue and Recovery discs then wiped the HDD and installed Windows 7 Pro clean from MSDN. I've always said i'll be buying a bay battery to put in there or just get a media saver (space holder to make the machine lighter) but just haven't yet so it sits in there sucking up power doing nothing!

(My T61 before that had a space saver in it as i never used the optical drive also - i kept the space saver thinking it would fit the new one but it doesn't )

 

Blu-ray all the way. Netbooks no need. But for regular laptop, IMHO it should be fully functional like a desktop, especially if you have no desktop. I wouldn't go without an optical drive in my desktop so why would I in my laptop?

 

Well, I don't have an optical in my laptop and desktop. I have an external that barely gets used. Do you need an optical outside of the home?

I see so many students carrying around power bricks and plugging them in. If they took that same weight for a battery, they could leave the brick at home, no?

 

- Drivers - yes... but you only need to read that CD/DVD once when you first get your hardware - I usually than copy the content to my "Installations and drivers" folder and have it handy all the time, not needing to look for the CD ever again... I even usually throw it away. Besides that you can always download it from internet...
- Friend with CD?? Now that a 8GB USB stick costs as much as a BigMac?? You have the wrong friends I would say
- Games (not playing and even when - internet!)
- Software - Internet
- Where would I have no internet but all my CDs handy !??? All CDs/DVDs I have stay at home. I have a copy of the most important (drivers/software) on my hard drive.

So having an optical drive is a must for me... but absolutely enough if it is an external USB drive that I would keep at home or sometimes take with me whenever I think I might need it. But why have it in your laptop all the time if you only use it like twice an year

 

A little off topic, but that would depend on the notebook. If it was one of the 1st generation i7 Clevo/Sager gaming machines, not really, since the weight would only give them a battery that lasts maybe another 45 minutes.

 

Oh, I see I made a total non-sequitur. I meant to say that if you ditched the optical, you could substitute in a good 3-4 cells in place. Weight of the power brick would be another 5 cells.

The sweet spot for a notebook is 4 lbs. MB Pro 13" is 4.5 lbs and is consistently at the top of Amazon's best sellers. MSI x370 already shows us that a VAIO Z type machine can be made for about $600. Add a 1600x900 screen and one more pound of battery and you're at max $800. You have a machine that is comparable to the Z, slightly heavier but with a substantially longer battery life and is half the price. And oh yeah, it outclasses the MacBook Pro 13 in every single way.

As far as a gaming machine, I think the solution would be to start selling these as an accessory during checkout.

This would slay the market. Who's gonna do it? Nobody.

 

Oh, ok. Well, still depends on the power draw of the notebook, and it's not like optical drives weigh any appreciable amount.

As well, while I appreciate the power savings of Zacate, the 1st generation core-i processors in the old Vaio Z totally kill it in terms of processing power. So calling the X370 a Vaio Z type machine is a bit of a misnomer.

Don't get me wrong, on the original topic of this (do you want an ODD), I am halfway in agreement with you... but only halfway. I'd prefer a modular bay where you can slot in an ODD, HDD, battery, or something else, like the old Thinkpad UltraBays. A lot of the people I see that say they don't want an ODD, though, want the space/weight completely removed, to make the entire notebook as a whole lighter and smaller. And while I don't mind notebooks like that (for those people), that's not for me at present. I want the option of being able to use the space for something.

 

Lenovo X220, will have none. Have had 4 laptops in my life (Inspiron 9100, Asus EEE 901, Acer 3810T, Acer 1830T) and only one has had an ODD.

 

I rarely use my optical drive for anything other then installing my OS. Currently the only optical drives I have for my x200s is the one in the dock and the USB powered one that collects dust in my bag. The only reason to have one is for computers that cannot boot from a usb device per bios limitations. If your computer can boot from USB, then an optical drive is worthless in my eyes.

 

Although I also voted for not necessarily needing optical drive, I don't completely agree with the above statement!

So my computer can boot from USB - what would you suggest - keeping a Windows installation on USB-drive that will be unusable for anything else or looking for a way to create one (another PC, software, time...) every time you need it instead of just putting the DVD in the drive and booting !??

But again - I would use external Optical drive for that as well, but I do not like the idea of installing OS and generally booting from USB sticks. I mean if I have 10 sticks lying around I could sacrifice one that would have the bootable OS on it all the time, but.... 1 DVD disk costs nothing...

 

Optical drive is pointless when you can get everything from internet.
I've voted for HDD - having SSD and HDD from factor would be awesome.

 

Either use 3.8GB of a flash drive, external HDD or use a USB powered optical and keep that disc. Either way an optical drive built in is a thing of the past and not needed for most users. Now if you watch DVDs or listen to CDs the old fashioned way then yes youll need an optical drive, but why waste precious space and sata port inside the laptop when a USB drive will do. Im all for legacy support for those who need it, and thats why I still carry an optical drive and have one in my dock.

But the necessity for one? Well thats old fashioned thinking. Between USB, eSata, and internet based storage the very limited size optical media is just a waste. Discs take up alot of space when you carry more then one, and unless you only have one disc youre going to be eating alot of bag space storing discs.

Im currently in the process of burning all my dvds so I can be completely rid of optical technology and can work with files and streams only.

 

I'd like the bay to use a standard connector where you can plug whatever you want into the thing, although I wouldn't mind having a battery in there.

 

I think we share the absolute same opinion, I just don't agree an optical drive is useless generally! I 100% agree it doesn't have to be internal nowadays. But I would still want to have one as external as there are still times you may need one. It will be some time until CD/DVD/Bluray drives become what Floppy-drives are today...

 

Another reason to love thinkpads! Want an optical drive? Sure! Want another HDD/SSD? Sure! Want another battery? Sure! Want nothing there to reduce weight? Sure!

Ultrabay for the win!

Agreed. Like I said I still carry my external and have one in my dock for those times where I need one. But I long for the day where I dont need one. Just need a few weeks dedicated to ripping my dvds and usb bootable computers.

 

Yes.... and thinkpads DO need weight reduction more than anything else, but even lack of an optical drive doesn't help :-/

Oh I did that one day half an year ago... see how fast a 1TB gets nearly full and a whole section in my living room became free ) Of course I had to take out the trash right away

 

Definitely. I buy desktop replacements. Weight isn't an issue and they're large enough to hold 2 HDD's anyway.

For my netbooks I wouldn't want one though.

 

You make some good points, but you do realize that people are different right?
I actually like to OWN hard copies of the software, games, Windows etc instead of having everything on a virtual library like steam or on a USB stick.
And not everyone put old games and software that they have on a CD on a USB stick. And if you have everything on a harddrive you CAN lose it all if something goes wrong, but if you have it on CD it is safe. A Bluray/DVD reader doesn`t cost anything and doesn`t weigh much either. Call me old fashioned, but i am sticking with the optical drive.

And to top it all, the postal services here in Norway have decided to start sending letters, bills etc to a private account on the internet now instead of our mailbox. God damn. I bet in 10 years we are all sitting on a chair in front of our computer and using more time on the internet than real life. Tron here we come...

 

You're right about this. I should have said that it is similar to the VAIO Z in almost every way that matters. Namely, size, weight, GPU speed, battery longevity. It is only weak in the CPU department, a limitation that matters for less and less people each year.

I take your point though, but you'd also have to concede to mine as well. CPU just doesn't matter that much and AMD is right to push that point. That said, I admit Zacate is pretty weak. If LLano is anything like Zacate with more oomph. That is, if it can just deliver Core i3 power, then really... there is no need for compromise at all in notebook specs. The only exception being FPS gamers of course.

 

It really depends on your usages. For people that only do basic tasks (office, internet, etc), then yes, I can happily agree with you. To me, however, the CPU does in fact matter, and Zacate (and possibly even Llano) is too weak for me. This is, after all, why I own a HP 8740w. For people like me that use a notebook for more than just office and internet, CPU matters a lot.

 

Yes, we agree. I remember when CPU used to matter for everyone in 1996, even me. That few hundred MEGAhertz determined app launch times considerably. Today it only matters for people specifically looking for it, who are now a minority of the population.

 

I guess for me I want Blu-Ray, but other than that yeah an external is more than adequate.

 

34% for optical
66% for something else.
Number of box makers that care? zero.

 

As long as there's not a weight penalty, yes.

 

Yeah have about 4 hours in and Im at 200GB. Sadly I no longer have my XPS which for me now only really shined during encoding sessions.

As for thinkpads thats why a decent amount went the was of the s models for even more then just lack of optical drive. I think with a 9 cell my x200s weighs just over 3lbs. Dont know the exact figure, and as always Im too lazy to google search it.

Yeah I remember going from a 75mhz pentium to a pentium 2 233mhz. What a jump! Might have more to do with the p6 vs p5 chip, either way it was a night and day improvement and that chip lasted me from 1998ish until 2004. Back then each mhz was a felt improvement. I sure miss those days.

Now a jump of ~150MHz is deemed worthless in the real world and only for those who want to shave milliseconds off cpu intensive tasks.

 

That's because this poll is essentially biased: the NBR community has users who are as a whole far more technologically-adept than the average Joe who buys computers, and so we understand how to install the OS or drivers through USB or the Internet, and how to rip videos to a file we can play from our hard drive.

But the average Joe doesn't know that. Most computer manufacturers target that average Joe, who wants to watch DVDs and Blu-Ray disks they buy, and in the rare case that their OS dies, reformat by inserting the OEM-supplied disk.

The Envy 15 was a very commendable experiment by HP into the benefits of axing the space-hogging ODD, and as a result packed a very powerful GPU, a fairly large battery, and a plethora of ports into a thin and relatively light chassis. But it still faced considerable negative comments from lay-reviewers who blasted the fact that such a large notebook "couldn't fit" an ODD, and I'll bet there were many puzzled average Joes who were extremely disappointed to realize they couldn't just insert a disk to watch a video.

I really do hope that more manufacturers realize that it's 2011 and experiment with removing the ODD, though. Regarding Thinkpads, I'd like to see Lenovo supply an UltraBay battery that supports charge thresholds (just like the primary battery) as an ODD replacement option when buying the machine: perhaps +$40 or so to get a laptop with the UltraBay battery installed, and without the ODD.

 

Average Joe makes up for exponentially more customers then power users.

 

That's true. But that's also like saying we should stop selling BMW and Lexus because most people don't need them.

 

Only if it's a slot-drive.

 

Not what I was saying, but I see your point.

With today's technology there is no need for one, and all those laymen out there that outnumber power users dont reformat their own computers anyways. Plus most people stream content as opposed to popping in a new disc. Between on demand, netflix and other internet streaming sources watching/listening from media will surely die soon. When I can find, load and start watching a FHD movie in less time then it takes to find the dvd and pop it in and load will only feed the inherent laziness in humans.

I never understood why slot load didnt take off. "Normal" optical drives have always been so flimsy and a PITA to use sometimes, but slot loaders (if you must have an optical) are so much better.

 

I don't, either. From a design point, it's minimal and its design adds to its functions. Sure, it's probably a little more expensive, but surely not as much as substituting your HDD with an SSD.

 

Tray-load may be somewhat flimsy, but they're actually still more reliable than slot-load, especially if the loading mechanism in a slot loader fails. In that case, you can still almost always eject a tray-loader (the famous pin in the hole), but for a slot-loader, you almost always have to disassemble your notebook... which makes things much worse for your average user.

And from a design standpoint, slot-load is a lot more complicated than tray-load (for the mechanism). In terms of designing one into a notebook, since they use nearly identical form factors, it doesn't make for much of a difference.

Oh, and for those few of us that use "mini" discs, you can't feed those into a slot-loader, but a tray-loader will take them just fine.

 

I hate optical drives! they are completely useless to me and have been for 10 years. Everything can be found online now. You only need an optical for an OS installation or for making a DVD for your grandma. Anyone who still uses DVDs for movies needs to get with the times and go digital . Also steam makes optical media obsolete. Even if you do use optical discs to install stuff, how often do you really install stuff outside the house?

I just bought a 13" acer 3820TG and instead of an optical drive it has a second fan for the GPU which is the best thing you could put in that space. I see lots of 14 and 15" laptop with switchable graphics but they share the same fan for both heatsinks/pipes and have a useless DVD drive there instead which is why I went for the 3820TG.

 

Even though I don't want an ODD in my laptops, I still keep a portable one for things like Sim City 4, Netflix dvd's, ect. Not everyone can afford a great internet connection which allows large amounts of streaming/downloading.

 

Now, here's the maddening thing about all of this. Even if this forum doesn't represent the mainstream, it's still a hefty portion of the entire market. What would make sense is for box makers to put out some non-optical solutions. However, other than the MB Air, VAIO X, what is there?

The problem is the CEOs of these companies. They have no vision because they are penny pinching, business school graduates. They aren't entrepreneurs.

 

The next generation of apple laptops probably won't have optical drives now that they have that app store on OSX. This will be all over the news since any Apple news gets high ratings and every other PC company will follow suit. Apple will get credit for killing the DVD like they did for the floppy disk. Wait till next year.

 

I'll likely dump my unibody for the MBA refresh if it's got i5 or Llano in it. Then, I wouldn't have to wait til next year! But, that won't happen.

 

I would love an extended battery.

It would also mean you could slot in a 2nd reserve battery without shutting the machine down.

 

I never use my optical drive other than for installing games and it doesn't work well because the connection for it is loose. I still have to fix that. All the trouble this optical drive gives me makes me not ever wanting it. I rather have more battery life.

 

I see youre argument. Mini discs arent too popular though. The eject issue I can see, and that alone makes tray better for issues and concerns. But overall with a working drive slot is better for me and the slot load in my old acer is still running 5+ years later so durability isnt much of a concern with slot loaders.